The greater Hartford, Connecticut area — prompted by a state court case, Sheff v. O’Neill — has become a strong, if still imperfect, example of policies and practices that allow students to enroll across district lines.

It has a mix of nearly 40 public magnet schools and a robust interdistrict transfer program that allows students to enroll in traditional public schools across district lines.

Several features of Hartford’s program:

Large scale: Hartford serves roughly 40,000 students in interdistrict public magnet schools each year and another roughly 3,000 in an interdistrict public school open choice program. More than half of all Hartford students attend one of these schools, and the state has committed to expanding the opportunity to all Hartford students of color.

Free transportation: Transportation is free to families.

Diversity by design: Lotteries and recruitment strategies use socioeconomic status to create diversity.

Investments in communities of color: Many of the magnet schools are located in cities with large concentrations of students of color (primarily Hartford and New Haven). They attract some students in from the suburbs, but the majority are students who live in the city, increasing opportunities for families of color in their home district.

Both Florida and West Virginia have true countywide districts (without the many exceptions to this general rule that are found in most Southern states) and have the two lowest levels of between-district income segregation in the country.

In Starkville, Mississippi, the state consolidated two small districts in 2015 to save money and provide a better education for students in an under-resourced, racially isolated school district bordering a better-resourced, more diverse district.

Families and community members on both sides of the line had fears about fights and student mistreatment. Some were concerned about white flight. But according to local reporting at Mississippi Today, “nearly everyone involved has been surprised at how well the consolidation has gone.”

In Morristown, New Jersey the state consolidated two districts in 1971 explicitly to address racial segregation and created one of the most racially diverse districts in the state, despite dire predictions at the time. And according to The Century Foundation, “the district has achieved impressive, if incomplete, success at attracting and maintaining a diverse student population and offering them the educational and social benefits of integration education.”

States should adopt antisecession laws to prevent continued district fracturing and segregation. In 2022 the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) studied 10 years of data to find 36 school district secessions across the country. In these 36 examples, the newly created districts were roughly three times as white and half as impoverished as the districts being left behind.

EdBuild cataloged examples of stronger state policies that would prevent such a response, and cited two strong ways to do this:

1. Allow secession only via a constitutional change. See Georgia and Florida as examples.

2. Require strong review and approval processes for secession. For example, in California, a state agency must consider the impact on segregation, efficiency, and funding. Connecticut, Arizona, Texas, and Vermont require voters in the “left behind” district to vote to approve any such change.