Schools To Appeal State Magnet Ruling

New Haven gave the state an inaccurate picture of how much it costs to run the inter-district magnet program, by leaving out the cost of utilities, transportation and other overhead.

So the Board of Education will try again — with better numbers — to win permission to start charging suburban towns for educating their children in city magnet schools.

That accounting ​“oversight,” as school officials called it during Monday night’s regular Board of Education meeting at Celentano School, led the state education commissioner to have an incomplete view of New Haven’s spending when he denied the request to charge nearby suburbs up to $2,250 for each student they send to an inter-district magnet school.

Without including all of last year’s cost overruns — like $839,000 for utility bills and $775,000 for cross-town busing — the budget documents that New Haven sent to the Connecticut State Department of Education made it seem like magnet program is running at a surplus, even though the district as a whole ended the year $2.84 million in the red.

“I’m really confused and I’m a little upset. To me, this was not a small oversight. It was a big oversight, and it may cost us this opportunity,” said Tamiko Jackson-McArthur, the school board’s secretary. ​“I’m looking to rectify this letter. I would rather have seen it denied on the whole truth, because I don’t feel like the whole picture was given.”

Superintendent Carol Birks said she plans to appeal the commissioner’s decision. The school’s finance director, Juanita Mazyck, said she’d create new budget line-items that more accurately reflected the overhead costs at each building.

Board members agreed to go ahead with that, but they said they want to hire their own outside counsel to look over the letter to prevent another ​“mishap.” They added that they want to move ahead with notifying nearby superintendents about their plans before a Sept. 1 deadline.

That motion just barely passed, on a 4 – 3 vote, after a wide-ranging debate about the best way to reform how schools are funded in Connecticut.

Some board members, including Mayor Toni Harp and Matt Wilcox, said that the city should focus its efforts on changing the state’s broken funding formula, which sends $13.8 million to suburban school districts for students that New Haven teaches, and its racial-isolation requirements, which penalize the district for not recruiting enough white, Asian-American and Native students.

They said that shaking down the city’s equally broke neighbors, like West Haven and Hamden, wouldn’t gain them allies in the legislature.

“I’m not on the West Haven school board, and I understand that,” Wilcox said. ​“But this moves us into the idea of a backpack funding formula, where money follows the student, rather than taking a look at the need.”

Mayor Harp said that she’d rather retain a lawyer to challenge the state’s racial-isolation requirements.

She said she doesn’t want to see the overturning of Sheff v. O’Neill, the state’s landmark desegregation case that led to the proliferation of inter-district magnets. But she wants to see New Haven receive the same funding as Hartford schools if they’re going to be held to the same standard that they already can’t meet.

But a majority of board members, led by Darnell Goldson, the board president, and Jackson-McArthur, responded that a looming bill might be the only way to make suburban legislators see the urgency of rewriting the rules.

Goldson said that the board would be checking the appeal with its own experts before it goes out again, saying that he didn’t feel the administration was ​“really engaged” in pursuing the tuition charges from the beginning of the process.

“It’s not about doing West Haven or Hamden wrong; it’s about doing our kids right,” he said. ​“If we’re not getting the resources that our kids deserve we need to go through the system that they set up to get them.”

An earlier version of this story follows:

State Blocks Magnet Changes

The state has blocked New Haven Public Schools from making any substantial changes to its inter-district magnet program.

An official from the Connecticut State Department of Education (CSDE) denied both requests that the district made earlier this summer, to admit more local students and to charge suburban districts to the 16 inter-district magnet schools that are open to students from across district lines.

Keith Norton, CSDE’s chief strategic planning officer, issued that decision in a Friday letter sent to Superintendent Carol Birks, copied to Miguel Cardona, the state’s new education commissioner, and all of New Haven’s state senators and representatives.

Neither the state department nor the school district responded to requests for comment on Friday evening.

Charge Suburbs? Magnets Make Too Much Already

In late July, New Haven asked CSDE for permission to charge other districts $2,250 in tuition for each student they send to the inter-district magnet schools. Those fees would have primarily come from neighboring suburbs like West Haven, Hamden and North Haven.

In total, between the primary Education Cost Sharing (ECS) formula and supplementary grants for the magnet program, New Haven receives roughly $12,550 for each city resident and $8,385 for each suburban resident in its inter-district magnet schools.

Charging tuition — from districts that currently pocket roughly $13.8 million in ECS funds for students in New Haven’s inter-district magnets — would close the gap in state subsidies.

According to state law, in deciding whether to allow the charges, the commissioner must compare the average per pupil expenditure for each inter-district magnet school and the average per pupil revenue from state subsidies and other grant. The statute adds that the commissioner may also ​“conduct a comprehensive financial review” of the district’s operating budget to verify that tuition would be ​“appropriate.”

Norton said that the financial documents provided by the district show that New Haven’s inter-district magnet schools are already pulling in more than enough money, suggesting that tuition would effectively be diverted into its other schools.

“[W]e have not received information which shows that these schools are running in a deficit, which would be necessary to justify charging neighboring districts for the attendance of out-of-district students,” he wrote. ​“In fact, data provided to our office indicates that the interdistrict magnet schools in New Haven are operating at a surplus, which means that any tuition charged would be used to offset costs associated with New Haven’s public schools.”

The documents submitted to the state show that New Haven’s inter-district magnet schools ran a slight deficit last school year in general operating funds, coming up $299,060 short. (Its other schools plunged $8.42 million into the red in general funds.) The schools also spent every dollar of inter-district magnet funds to end with a zero balance, and cancelled out Title I funds with a $4,665 deficit.

But an unspent federal grant, the Magnet School Assistance Program (MSAP), made it seem like the magnet schools are sitting on a pile of cash. According to the budget documents, West Rock, which had a $206,000 deficit in the general operating funds, ended the year with a $559,000 surplus in MSAP funds; King-Robinson, which had a $45,000 deficit in the general operating funds, ended the year with a $269,000 surplus in MSAP funds; and Davis, which had a $245,000 surplus in the general operating funds, ended the year with a $164,000 surplus in MSAP funds too.

All together, that made it look like the magnet school program came out $815,071 ahead.

But it’s unclear what line items the district chose to include in the schools’ site-based budgets to show they were running a deficit or surplus.

For instance, officials chose to leave out most overhead expenses. Instead, they budgeted those major losses against Central Office, like the $1,784,000 for itinerant employees such as psychologists, social workers and speech and hearing pathologists; $839,000 for utilities, like electricity, natural gas and water; $775,000 for inter-district transportation; $355,000 for legal fees; and $165,000 for substitute teachers.

That meant that, while the district as a whole spends roughly $18,400 per student, the documents make it seem like the inter-district magnet schools themselves spent only $7,485 per student last school year.

Board members said that they aren’t done pursuing the issue.

Tamiko Jackson-McArthur, the school board member who led efforts to change the magnet program after hearing a barrage of complaints from parents who couldn’t get in, called the state’s decision ​“a huge disappointment.”

She said she did not understand why the state believes the magnet program is operating at a surplus, given the $19.4 million deficit the entire district started with a year ago before it closed three schools and laid off three dozen counselors, librarians and teachers.

“New Haven is being told to educate all enrolled students without being fully funded for all children,” she said. ​“I don’t understand why the state commissioner has stated that we have been operating without a deficit. At no time has the board been told that were not in a deficit. There has been no reporting that says we are in a deficit in all things except magnet funds.”

Jackson-McArthur added that she wants to see the financial budgets sent to the state that show the magnet program generating a surplus.

“I am going to ask to see all documents sent to the state with this request,” she said. ​“I believe this issue will not easily be quieted, at least in my efforts.”

Darnell Goldson, the school board’s president, said he also plans to ask his fellow board members at Monday night’s meeting to send another letter to the commissioner, to move ahead with notifying other districts before Sept. 1, and to retain a lawyer ​“to assist with understanding and protecting our rights.”

“This tuition fight is long from over,” he wrote in an email.

Fewer Suburbanites? Against Program’s Goals

In mid-June, New Haven also asked CSDE for permission to amend the recruitment goals in its state-approved operating plans to maximize the number of desks available to city children.

State law says that, for most inter-district magnets, no more than 75 percent of the desks can go to residents of a single town.

But the state has put additional restrictions on New Haven. The state-approved operating plans set a recruiting goal of only 65 percent local enrollment; in practice, that’s meant, like last year, only 53.8 percent of open seats went to city kids.

In response, the state said that changing the recruiting goals could hurt New Haven schools over the long run, refusing financial support and staying racially segregated. But it also said that it recognized the complaints of parents who can’t get in and would present an alternative plan within the month to address their concerns.

Holding spots for the suburbs, which generally have far more white families, is meant to diversify across town lines. Racially Integrated schools have lifelong benefits for black children, lasting even into the next generation, without doing any harm to white children.

“Interdistrict magnet schools were established to further the goals of integrating students from different backgrounds and experiences so that all Connecticut students can learn with and from each other, and to foster a sense of community in order to prepare them for a successful post-secondary environment,” Norton explained. ​“The residency standards for magnet schools set forth in the Connecticut General Statutes are intended to help districts reach those goals by providing an integrated setting.”

Even with more spots going to the suburbs, a program of voluntary desegregation isn’t achieving that goal in New Haven.

Only one of its inter-district magnet schools — Engineering & Science University Magnet School — has met the state’s cutoff for avoiding racial isolation, meaning at least 25 percent of it students are white, Asian-American, Native or a mix of those races.

The state also penalized two other schools for failing to meet racial isolation cut-offs, withholding $134,998 from Hill Regional Career High School and $115,530 from Metropolitan Business Academy.

The school board said that meant they should increase the number of spots for New Haven residents to the maximum allowed by law. But Norton said that would make things even worse.

“We are concerned,” he wrote, ​“with the long term implications of changing the recruitment and enrollment standards of the operations plans, both financially and in meeting the important aforementioned integration goals.”

Norton added that the state wants to make sure families have access to the opportunities that inter-district magnet schools offer.

“At the same, CSDE is dedicated to helping Connecticut students take advantage of the best educational opportunities available,” he went on. ​“We share your interest, and that of the New Haven Board of Education, in providing New Haven students with the change to attend one of the magnet schools in your district, and maximizing any opportunity to do so.”

Norton said that staff from his office have been working on a plan to let more New Haven students attend inter-district magnet schools, which he said would also help New Haven’s budget.

“This plan should be completed within the next two weeks, at which time, we would invite you to our offices in order for us to present our ideas to you and explain how this might accomplish our common goals,” he concluded.

Previous stories on New Haven’s inter-district magnet schools:

• Suburbs Profit Off New Haven’s Magnets
• Magnet School Tuition Back On The Table
• Magnet Lottery Rigged For Suburbanites
• Suburban ​“Pushback” Feared On Magnets
• Goldson Targets Magnet Hustle
• Magnets Seek $2,250 Tuition From Suburbs