Archives

History of Interdistrict Cooperative Grant Programs
//BACKGROUND AND OVERVIEW//
 * INTERDISTRICT COOPERATIVE GRANTS**

The case of Sheff v. O’Neil involved a lawsuit brought by seventeen Hartford children in 1989. The children claimed to have been denied an equal education to their suburban counterparts because of residential segregation. In 1994, the state Superior Court ruledthat the plaintiffs had failed to prove that the state was responsible for the segregation of the Hartford schools. This decision was overruled in 1996 by the Connecticut Supreme Court, which found that the Hartford schools failed to provide the equal educational opportunity guaranteed in the state constitution (Hartford Primer).

Rather than opt for a state takeover, the state education department decided in the spring of 1996 to form a new partnership with Hartford schools and promised to come up with a reform agenda. Pressure for reform mounted in July of 1996 when a decision was reached in Hartford’s Sheff v. O’Neill case, in which the Connecticut Supreme Court ordered the legislature to come up with a plan to both improve failing city schools and desegregate the region’s schools (Green, Hartford Courant, March 8, 1997), where 95% of students were from minority backgrounds (Kuczkowski, Hartford Advocate, 1997). The 4-3 decision said that, “the public elementary and high school students in Hartford suffer daily from the devastating effects that racial and ethnic isolation, as well as poverty, have had on their education” (Bernhard). In the fall of 1996, Commissioner Sergi presented the board with his 48-point plan to improve schools, which contained many ideas that came from the board itself. The Board’s reaction, however, was cool and board members claimed they needed time to analyze it and set priorities. Finally, after attending numerous board meetings and stressing the importance of each point, Sergi convinced the board to back the entire plan (Kuczkowski, Hartford Advocate, 1997). (Stormont, Shannon. Examining the Governance Structure of Hartford Schools, 2002)

Interdistrict cooperative grants remain a part of this plan. The goals of the grants are:

State Goal 1 Reduce racial, ethnic and economic isolation

State Goal 2 Increase Student Achievement

State Goal 3 Promote multi-racial multicultural understanding

State Goal 4 Build positive meaningful relations among students

Pathways Program