A Hartford court has ordered three magnet schools to be relocated or renovated on the state's dime as part of the state's ongoing effort to diversify area schools.
The Montessori Magnet at Moylan School, the Hartford Pre-Kindergarten Magnet School, and the Betances STEM Magnet School -- all three are slated to be moved to new or renovated buildings starting in 2017. The Montessori school is scheduled to be renamed.
The state is also being asked to create 1,000 new magnet school seats, and 325 Open Choice seats.
This court order comes as public education spending has been flat for years, and legislators have expressed concern about spending money to build new schools.
But the order has to be fulfilled. That's because it's part of the ongoing agreement stemming from the 1996 state Supreme Court case Sheff vs. O'Neill, in which the court ordered Hartford to enact measures to desegregate its public schools.
State Rep. Andrew Fleischmann, chairman of the General Assembly's education committee, said that the answer to diversifying the public schools isn't more magnet schools.
"We could achieve those goals more quickly, and effectively, through the Open Choice program, than by building inter-district magnets," Flieschmann said.
Stephen Glassman, executive director of the ACLU of Connecticut, said that he's hopeful that the General Assembly sees the importance of fully-funding the project.
"This is a difficult year to be able to balance these things out, so we're going to be advocating very strongly for full funding," Glassman said.
The General Assembly has never disobeyed a court order over this case in the last 19 years. The cost to relocate the three schools remains unclear.
