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Changing Racial Demographics Complicate Hartford Desegregation

U.S. Department of Education
Students at the University High School of Science and Engineering in Hartford speak at an event with U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in May.
Credit Hartford Public Schools
/
Hartford Public Schools
Students from Hartford's Batchelder Elementary School visit early in 2014 with meteorologists from Channel 8.

State education officials are currently negotiating changes to Connecticut's landmark school desegregation settlement. 

The talks come at a time when Department of Education officials contend changing racial demographics in Hartford's suburbs are making it challenging to ensure more students in the capital city learn in a racially integrated setting.

With several neighboring communities like Bloomfield and East Hartford experiencing huge growth in black and Hispanic populations, state officials said they're looking at other ways to comply with 1996 Connecticut Supreme Court ruling, beyond trying to attract white students from communities farther and farther away from Hartford.

But lawyers for the plaintiffs in that case say only a handful of communities have experienced big demographic changes and there remain plenty of wealthy, predominantly white school districts to draw from.

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