Fairfield’s Board of Education seeks to bring racial balance to its elementary schools
The Fairfield Public Schools Board of Education presented the proposed amendment of its Racial Balance Plan to the Connecticut State Board of Education (CSBE) on Nov. 2.
The Fairfield Board”™s plan for racial balance outlines its expected efforts from 2022 to 2024 in curbing and greatly reducing imbalances in student body composition and academic achievement in the district”™s elementary schools, bringing them in compliance with the State Board of Education Regulation”™s racial imbalance law.
Prior to its latest presentation to CSBE, the board and superintendent engaged in talks and meetings with the school district community, including families and staff members, about racial balance, academic excellence and facility utilization; more meetings will be held in December and into early 2023.
The first community engagement this year was June 9 with McKinley Elementary community members. The student body composition at McKinley prompted the Fairfield Board of Education to pen its plan for racial balance that was originally approved on Nov. 15, 2016.
In May 2015, the CSBE found McKinley to be racially imbalanced, with 49.10% of its student body being students of color in the 2014-2015 school year, in contrast to the overall district”™s student body that year being 20.53% students of color ”” a difference of 28.57%. At this percentage, McKinley fell within the State Board of Education Regulations”™ definition of a racially imbalanced school, one in which a school”™s minority population is more or less than 25% of the comparable proportion for the school district.
Subsequent school years have seen the imbalance grow, with a low of 27.20% in 2015-2016 and a high of 30.25% in 2020-2021, with this past school year falling somewhere in between 29.23%.
According to the Fairfield Board”™s Plan, by Feb. 1, 2023, the superintendent will have conducted an equity review that will see how the school district ensures students, regardless of race or ethnicity, are “safe, nurtured and learning, regardless of the school that they attend,” and will make recommendations for improvements accordingly.
Some of the starkest evidence and consequences of the racial imbalance present in the school district can be seen in the rates of proficiency in English language arts and math in school years 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 among White and Black students, with the latter group”™s proficiency rates in both educational categories rarely reaching or exceeding that of the former group.
Holland Hill Elementary School saw some of the largest differences in proficiency rates among the 11 elementary schools in the district, with its White and Black student body respectively being rated 74% and 33% for proficiency in English language arts in 2017-2018, a difference of 41 points. For math in 2018-2019, the difference in proficiency between White and Black students was respectively 70% and 17%, a difference of 53 points.
In addition to racial imbalance, the Fairfield Board will also tackle the issue of facility utilization, which it will address with a redistricting of the school district beginning Dec. 1, with a redistricting charge to the administration. The new elementary attendance zones are expected to be in place by August 2024.
The initiative comes as a result of projected 2024-2025 enrollment rates from a June 28, 2022, report, which finds that some schools are expected to fall “significantly below target utilization,” with low enrollment resulting in inefficient use of facility space.
The Fairfield Board will have acted, by Oct. 30, 2023, on a proposed redistricting plan based in part on recommendations by the Superintendent, which will be presented to a committee of the Fairfield Board between Jan 1. and May 30, 2023.
“The district will address the racial imbalance issue while addressing these facilities concerns,” the plan said. “The superintendent will present district-wide redistricting plans, which will bring the disparity in racial composition between any one elementary school and the district-wide K-5 average within the limits required by law.”
The plan maintains that for the Fairfield Public Schools”™ Board, administrators and faculty members to attain a “heightened level of understanding” of “racial balance and educational equity,” equity training workshops will need to be introduced. These workshops will be implemented from Feb. 1 to May 15, 2023.