Suburban ​“Pushback” Feared On Magnets

The last time New Haven tried to charge tuition for its inter-district magnet schools, state lawmakers told the city, ​“Nice try.”

This time, school officials are treading cautiously about trying again to send suburbs a bill, fearing another backlash.

The Board of Education has revived discussions about seeking the state’s permission to charge tuition to suburban towns that get reimbursed for the cost of educating students they send to regional magnet schools in New Haven.

In recent meetings on the subjects, the proposal caused parents, teachers and administrators to wonder aloud if suburbs would end their participation in magnet schools, fight the move in court or even punish the city with future legislation.

Michael Pinto, the district’s chief operating officer, said it’s hard to predict what might happen outside New Haven.

“Even if it is legal, is it feasible?” he asked. ​“One thing we do know is that if we change the ratio [of suburban students admitted] from 65 – 35 to 75 – 25, the state will reduce the magnet block grant. That $2.8 million loss is a real number, and the state will be pretty straightforward about it. But there are real variables here [with tuition] in what could happen on the other side of the equation.”

Some unwanted outcomes could indeed come to pass under a plan to start charging tuition. But a review of state law show that the rules currently in place usually — though not, always — favor New Haven’s ability to charge tuition, collecting part of the $13.8 million that the state sends to neighboring towns for students New Haven teaches.

“New Haven could charge tuition with the commissioner’s approval,” said Peter Yazbak, a spokesperson for the Connecticut State Department of Education. ​“In fact, New Haven was the district that pursued this legislation a few years ago, but chose not to submit a proposal.”

The inter-district magnet schools, which were expanded across Connecticut in an attempt to racially desegregate across town lines, haven’t seen much success in accomplishing that goal in New Haven. Even as more than half the seats in some magnets go to suburban students, only one school — 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.

That has led many to question why New Haven keeps reserving so many of its seats for suburban students, beyond the 75 percent minimum set by state law, if it’s still missing its goals and being fined for it. Especially while suburban towns keep a significant share of the money for kids that the city educates.

Several other schools in the state do ask for tuition for their inter-district magnet schools. Windham charges $4,850 per student for its one inter-district magnet school, after raising the admission price for the first time last school year; New London, $3,000 per student for its four schools; and Danbury $1,900 for its one school.

Bridgeport also tried to charge $3,000 per student at its schools, but the city found itself with a legal summons and little to show for it.

And some argue that New Haven, as the beneficiary of more than $1.5 billion in school construction dollars and continued tens of millions every year in magnet school support dollars, could get it even worse.

Fear: Suburbs Will Pull Out Of Magnets

If they had the extra space to take back their students, some suburbs might try to pull out of participating in New Haven’s magnet program, rather than pay tuition.

But even then, families still have the option to sign up on their own, and their hometown would still have to pay. (Click on the towns on the above map to see how much each keeps in ECS money.)

Yazbak, the spokesperson for the State Department of Education, said that’s because of a state statute informally known as ​“the parent choice law.”

That law ​“gives parents the ability to choose a magnet school that their town does not participate with and the ability for the magnet operators to fill unused seats with any students residing in Connecticut,” he said. ​“Sending districts cannot opt out of participating in a magnet program if their residents choose to participate.”

He added that they are ​“still required to pay approved magnet tuition and special education costs.”

Under that law, if a suburb did end its official participation in regional magnet schools in New Haven, its families would be pushed to the back of the line in the annual lottery for open seats. Those parents would be able to claim only the seats that are left over.

School officials said that resistance from other superintendents could still make it hard to generate enough participation to keep the magnet program running, even if parents tried to sign up on their own.

“When you look at charging tuition, are they going to cooperate with us?” asked Marquelle Middleton, the district’s choice and enrollment director. ​“Could they make recruiting harder, essentially deterring applicants, saying, ​‘We’d rather you not.’ It’s not like they can close the door and say, ​‘You can’t cross the line,’ but they can make it difficult and not cooperate as much as they are now.”

Michael Morton, a spokesperson for the Connecticut School Finance Project, added the one other hiccup could be for if some outlying towns, where New Haven doesn’t manage transportation, refuse to run buses, leaving parents to drop kids off themselves.

Fear: Suburbs Will Sue To Not Pay

Suburbs could file legal challenges to try to stop the tuition payments.

A similar case involving Bridgeport was dismissed almost from the get-go, but it’s still on appeal at the higher courts, holding up the payments.

In 2016, at about the same time New Haven was considering the issue, Bridgeport went ahead and told its neighbors they’d gotten state approval to start charging $3,000 per student for the nearly 600 suburban kids in its inter-district magnets.

Stamford’s then-superintendent called it a ​“dangerous game” and predicted a ​“tuition war,” as suburban legislators said Bridgeport was pulling a ​“bait and switch.”

A coalition of boards of education filed suit, but they eventually stopped litigating the case, when they were told they should have brought their complaints to the education commissioner, not a judge.

The only remaining plaintiff is James Feehan, the former chair of Stratford’s school board (who, this spring, also tried to reverse an election he lost for state representative by taking the case to the U.S. Supreme Court).

This May, a state judge said his allegations that taxpayer funds are being misappropriated are ​“wholly unsupported” and dismissed his case for lack of standing. Feehan’s now taking his claims to an appellate court.

In part, because of that case, Bridgeport hasn’t been able to collect what it’s owed.

At a recent finance meeting, the district’s chief financial officer, Marlene Siegel, said they’re owed $1.6 million from Stratford, Trumbull, Monroe and Shelton. She said that Bridgeport is now withholding tuition payments for Trumbull Agriscience School to make up about half the difference.

Siegel told the committee that she couldn’t discuss pending litigation, and she did not respond to an email on Tuesday morning.

Pinto, the COO, took that as a cautionary example that New Haven shouldn’t bet on a windfall, if its plans were even approved.

“Bridgeport tried this and they haven’t collected a dime,” he said. ​“The courts have cited that they can, but there’s no teeth to the law. There’s no mechanism for the state to assist in collecting the tuition. The charging district is on its own.”

Fear: Suburbs Will Close Off Their Schools

Some parents pointed out that New Haven sends dozens of its students to the suburbs through the Open Choice program, for which it could have to pay its own tuition. But experts say that wouldn’t be allowed by state law.

Open Choice, which allows students to apply for non-inter-district magnet schools outside their hometown, is part of the state’s effort to reduce racial and economic isolation and to increase academic achievement.

The program is organized by ACES, the state’s designated regional education service center for the New Haven area, which collects data on available seats, runs the application process and manages transportation.

In the 2017 – 18 school year, New Haven sent students out to participating suburbs, like Branford, which takes in 55 students; North Haven, 40; Milford, 40; Cheshire, 37; North Branford, 26; East Haven, 16; Woodbridge, 14; and Bethany, 5.

But New Haven also took dozens of students in too. Second only to West Hartford, the city’s school system provides more spots to the Open Choice program than any other Connecticut town.

In the 2017 – 18 school year, it made 179 seats available last year for suburban students to attend its two comprehensive high schools, James Hillhouse and Wilbur Cross; its local charter, Elm City Montessori; and nine of its intra-district magnet elementary schools.

But unlike for inter-district magnet schools — which send ECS money where the student lives, rather than where they go to school — New Haven is already paying its share for those Open Choice spots. The state’s funding formula automatically splits the ECS allocation in half for Open Choice participants.

Another funding formula provides an extra supplement for the receiving district to take kids through Open Choice. That grant ranges from $3,000 to $8,000 per pupil, depending on how much the district maximizes participation.

State law does not provide for the receiving districts to charge any additional tuition on top of that. However, just like for inter-district magnets, it does allow for receiving districts to charge for the difference in the ​“reasonable cost” of special education services.

Fear: Suburban Legislators Will Defund New Haven

Typhanie Jackson, the district’s student services coordinator, said she worries about ​“pushback” from moving ahead with charges, saying the district needs to ​“tread lightly.”

Many referenced 2016, when New Haven’s former chief financial officer first floated the idea of tuition. State legislators quickly responded by preventing the city from acting without the education commissioner’s okay and a year’s notice. Board of Ed President Darnell Goldson, a state lobbyist himself, said he’d never seen politicians move so quickly to pass a bill.

“It was a nice try, New Haven,” then-House Speaker J. Brendan Sharkey, a Hamden representative, told the Connecticut Mirror at the time. ​“To place that burden on the sending district is not OK.”

Some worry the same thing could happen this time around, especially when New Haven has so much to lose in continued state support after it already cashed in on a massive state-supported school construction campaign worth close to $2 billion.

But unlike in the past, a growing coalition of lawmakers say that, now they’ve committed to fully funding ECS by 2028, they want to also fix Connecticut’s tangle of other school funding formulas, including some like the magnet grants that have pitted towns against each other.

State Rep. Jeff Currey of East Hartford, the deputy majority leader who’s taken a lead on school finance, said he’s ready to revisit the way the state funds its public schools.

“While we’ve made strides in developing an ECS formula that we have now stuck to, it’s time to go back to the table and have discussions about how to finish the job, so that we are no longer talking about funding in these various types of schools and our focus can be more on what’s happening inside the classroom and how we can do our best to get out of the way, so that educators can do their job,” he said.

Mayor: Remove Race From The Equation

While funding is up for discussion, Mayor Toni Harp argued in an interview this week that the inter-district magnet program hasn’t been adequately funded to meet its goals, which she thinks needs to be reexamined anyway.

On this week’s ​“Mayor Monday” program on WNHH-FM, she said that the legislature changed the rules of participation without giving New Haven what it needed to meet its benchmarks, unlike how it dealt with Hartford-area magnets.

She said that the she thinks the state should stop punishing New Haven’s schools for not achieving racial integration. It’s not entirely up to the city who signs up for its schools, she noted. And she said New Haven is not being paid enough to bring them in.

“We’re held accountable for achieving something that requires other districts to participate in. I think that’s what makes it hard,” Harp said. ​“I think that the real issue is having there be some sort of — beyond what they get in ECS — incentive for the sending school district to send more kids.”

Harp said that the inter-district magnet school program was initially created to regionalize schools. At first, she said, the state only wanted to see the schools take in enough suburban students, but after Sheff v. O’Neill, the landmark desegregation case, they added in racial isolation benchmarks.

In Hartford, those desegregation efforts have narrowed — and in some cases, eliminated — the racial achievement gap on standardized test scores. Other research from across the country concludes that desegregation’s effects can last for a generation, resulting in more college degrees, higher incomes, lower incarceration rates and better health outcomes.

Even though New Haven wasn’t a party to the Sheff case, the legislature unanimously decided in 2017 to make it follow the same requirements. But it didn’t provide the extras that Hartford received to desegregate.

For instance, the state pays $13,054 for each out-of-towner who comes to a host magnet in the Hartford area. It pays only $7,085 for each out-of-towner who comes to New Haven. There’s a similar discrepancy in the amount for inter-district transportation.

“One of the things that I noticed when I was Appropriations Chair for the [StTe] Senate is that we don’t get the same benefit that Hartford gets. While we took on some of the responsibility, we weren’t in the case in the same way,” Harp said.

While cities like New Haven got a two-year reprieve from meeting their racial isolation goals this legislative session, Harp argued that the state should nix those racial requirements altogether and instead focus on mixing socioeconomic classes.

“The real question is where are we in paying off those bonds [for magnet school construction], and at what point are we relieved on paying off this obligation. I think it should be soon. I think we could get relieved of it, it’s just a matter of getting passed in the General Assembly,” Harp said.

“I think the most important thing,” she added, ​“is economic integration, and it shouldn’t necessarily be defined on race. That would mean more middle-class kids, no matter their race, coming in the system would make a big difference. We were able to do that and hit our numbers.”

Over the coming weeks, the Independent will continue to look at the various ways that New Haven’s 16 inter-district magnet schools have changed public education throughout the region. Do you have a story you’d like to tell us? Is there something about the schools that you want to know? Get in touch by emailing tips_photos@newhavenindependent.org. The Independent will not share nor publish anything you tell us without first obtaining your explicit agreement.

Previous stories:

• Suburbs Profit Off New Haven’s Magnets
• Magnet School Tuition Back On The Table
• Magnet Lottery Rigged For Suburbanites

WNHH’s ​“Mayor Monday” is made possible with the support of Gateway Community College and Berchem Moses P.C.