On Sept. 7, Superior Court Judge Thomas Moukawsher issued a decision in Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding Inc. v. Rell, which is the latest in a decades-long series of Connecticut lawsuits (commencing in the 1970s) that have sprouted in the soil where the “educational promise” the people inserted in the state constitution in 1965 (“There shall always be free public elementary and secondary schools in the state” and the “General Assembly shall implement this principle by appropriate legislation”) collides with the on-the-ground reality in poor public school districts (where educational outcomes lag far behind those in wealthier districts).
Get Instant Access to This Article
Subscribe to Hartford Business Journal and get immediate access to all of our subscriber-only content and much more.
- Critical Hartford and Connecticut business news updated daily.
- Immediate access to all subscriber-only content on our website.
- Bi-weekly print or digital editions of our award-winning publication.
- Special bonus issues like the Hartford Book of Lists.
- Exclusive ticket prize draws for our in-person events.
Click here to purchase a paywall bypass link for this article.
On Sept. 7, Superior Court Judge Thomas Moukawsher issued a decision in Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding Inc. v. Rell, which is the latest in a decades-long series of Connecticut lawsuits (commencing in the 1970s) that have sprouted in the soil where the “educational promise” the people inserted in the state constitution in 1965 (“There shall always be free public elementary and secondary schools in the state” and the “General Assembly shall implement this principle by appropriate legislation”) collides with the on-the-ground reality in poor public school districts (where educational outcomes lag far behind those in wealthier districts).
Moukawsher concluded that the state has defaulted on its constitutional educational promise to children in the poor districts, and gave the General Assembly 180 days to come up with a solution for him to review.
The decision is on expedited appeal to the Connecticut Supreme Court. However, regardless of what the Supreme Court decides, this case, like its predecessors, will likely fail to make a sufficient difference for the simple reason that the problem in these districts is economic in nature (self-perpetuating poverty and its many manifestations), and prosperity (and its associated human benefits) cannot be restored by judicial order or by legislative decree.
On the other hand, a suit filed on Aug. 23 in Connecticut Federal District Court (Martinez v. Malloy) is an education case with promise. It argues shrewdly that the state is, de facto, segregating children in the poor school districts (which it knows “full well” are inadequate) by placing artificial limits on the availability of “school- choice” options (magnet schools, charter schools, and open-choice programs) that would otherwise offer them a way out.
In legal terms, Martinez argues that legislative roadblocks limiting the availability of school choice violate the federal constitution's equal protection and due process rights of the children — who are left to languish “on waitlists for years and years” until it is too late.
In lay terms, the wisdom in Martinez is the same as that in the Serenity Prayer, which, as readers may know, is to ask God to grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Another way to say it is this: We must be mature enough to accept with pragmatism the fact that the poverty in question will not be ameliorated anytime soon, while having the wisdom and courage to change what we can in the meantime — expand school-choice options to give the kids a way out.
There is a fascinating alignment of the stars in these two separate cases (maybe God is listening after all). On the one hand, Mouwkawsher has made at least half the case for the plaintiffs in Martinez by concluding (after hearing weeks of evidence) that the public schools are, in fact, failing the children; and, on the other hand, the Martinez plaintiffs are spoon-feeding Mouwkawsher (depending on what happens in the appeal) a legislative remedy of the type he gave the General Assembly 180 days to devise — eliminate the artificial barriers that limit the availability of school choice.
The favorable alignment of these cases puts traditional opponents of school choice — the members of the state government-union axis (who want to protect their turf) and the social-justice visionaries (who want to fix cities like Bridgeport by taking money out of neighboring Fairfield) — between a rock (Moukawsher) and a hard place (the federal courts where Martinez was filed), which does not mean they are likely to change their minds anytime soon.
My response to the members of the government-union axis is that the situation has become sufficiently dire as to expose a massive ethical failing on their part — a conflict of interest born of the fact that the educational promise in the state constitution runs to the benefit of the children, not to the educators or employees of the state Department of Education who are merely the functionaries through which the promise is fulfilled.
My response to the social-justice visionaries is that they should not use children in poor districts as pawns in a quixotic effort to “solve poverty” by blaming, for example, wealthy Fairfield for the plight of Bridgeport; or to advance regionalism (a surreptitious form of wealth redistribution), which is a political impossibility that would, at best, dilute the concentration of poverty for a while.
In other words, in addition to the Serenity Prayer the visionaries should remember that the perfect (fixing all that ails Bridgeport, for example) should not be the enemy of the good (giving as many of the kids as possible a way out of its schools).
John M. Horak is a retired lawyer and the director of TANGO Nonprofit Education and Consulting in Farmington. The opinions expressed are his own.
