Wildaliz Bermúdez can still remember testifying in state court at 6 years old — she was “so tiny” that her feet didn’t reach the floor of the witness box when she sat down in front of judges and representatives from the Board of Education. She recalls telling them in her testimony: “P lease don’t close my school.”  Bermúdez’s was one of 10 Hartford public school families to sue the state of Connecticut in the landmark 1989 case Sheff v. O’Neill. Families and their lawyers — led by Elizabeth Sheff and her son Milo — argued that racial and socioeconomic segregation deprived their children of equal educational opportunities guaranteed by the state constitution.  The Connecticut Supreme Court eventually found for Bermúdez and 17 other student plaintiffs in 1996, a decision that led to a settlement expanding “school choice” and magnet school programs statewide.  Thirty-seven years later, Bermúdez is continuing to participate in a never-ending debate over how to bring general goals of equity into practice — now, as a candidate for state representative. A former Hartford city council member, Bermúdez is currently the executive director of New Haven’s Fair Rent Commission. She has launched a campaign to represent the 97th General Assembly District, which covers parts of Fair Haven, Fair Haven Heights, Quinnipiac Meadows, the Annex, and Morris Cove. She is set to challenge first-term Morris Cove Alder Leland Moore, the local Democratic Party’s endorsed candidate in the state-rep race, in the Aug. 11 Democratic primary election. In a recent interview with the Independent, Bermúdez described a throughline from Sheff to her campaign for state office. “It changed who I am,” Bermúdez said of Sheff v. O’Neill. “That’s what made my desire from a very young age to really be connected with the community and make our community better, because those are the core principles that were instilled in us through this Sheff v. O’Neill case.” “Wildaliz Bermúdez represents a powerful civic arc from a child affected by state education policy to an adult seeking to shape public policy,” said former New Haven Board of Education President Carlos Torre. At a campaign event last month by the Grand Avenue Bridge, Torre held Bermúdez’s notes for her as she spoke to the crowd about her priorities if elected state rep — first among them funding for New Haven Public Schools, which her daughter Avilene attends. (Click here to read a full opinion essay Torre has written in support of Bermúdez’s candidacy and about Bermúdez’s experiences as a Sheff plaintiff.) Bermúdez’s daughter Avilene is 9 — three years older than Bermúdez was when Sheff plaintiffs first asked: How can the state of Connecticut ensure that its students have equal access to education, whatever neighborhood they live in? “Apartheid In Connecticut” Sheff v. O’Neill centered on a group of Hartford public school students, who lawyers said were put at “a severe educational disadvantage in comparison with the suburban schools,” because more “at risk” students were concentrated in impoverished districts.  The school segregation she experienced in Hartford was “deplorable,” Bermúdez said: It was “basically like apartheid in Connecticut.” When Bermúdez and her siblings attended elementary and middle school, their father Pedro Bermúdez was also a teacher at S.A.N.D. School, which was located in a housing project in Hartford’s North End.  The school was underfunded, and for years, dangerous. Eva Bermúdez Zimmerman — who was also a plaintiff and who ran for lieutenant governor in 2018 — is six years younger than her sister Wildaliz. She remembers coming to work with her father and hearing gunshots outside classrooms. It was “all very terrifying,” she said. Wildaliz Bermúdez said her father heard through Hartford’s teachers union that lawyers were looking for plaintiffs in what would become the Sheff case, and he decided to sign the family up.  “He saw the poverty not just in school, but in the neighborhoods and how the children lived and how segregation crushed students and families and predetermined failing outcomes at schools,” according to Bermúdez. “My father and mother wanted for our family to be part of something that could better everyone’s lives.” The three Bermúdez siblings — Wildaliz, Eva, and their brother Pedro — joined 15 other white, Black, and Puerto Rican Hartford public school students as plaintiffs. Bermúdez’s father told the New York Times in 1989 of Wildaliz: “My 7-year-old speaks very little English, but she gets along very well with the other youngsters. They have a universal language.”  The case relied on a clause in the Connecticut constitution that guarantees students equal access to “minimally adequate education” across the state. Lawyers argued that forcing students to attend public schools in their districts was unconstitutional, because of “disparities in educational achievement” and segregation town-by-town. “People of means have options. If they don’t like their local school, they can put their child into private school, or Catholic school, or parochial school,” said Elizabeth Sheff, whose son Milo was the lead plaintiff in the case. “But people who don’t have that means are left with local school districts. School districts and town boundaries are the same, which means that the child is left to go to school only by fortune of his or her zip code,” she explained.  Seven years after the first lawsuit, Sheff and the Hartford public school plaintiffs won the case. Legislators responded to Sheff by establishing themed regional magnet schools, expanding “public school choice” and lottery systems, adding busing across districts, as well as taking measures to “increase public school accountability and parental involvement,” according to a 1999 memorandum of understanding (MOU).  “Whether one supports every aspect of the remedies or not, there is no question that Sheff changed the architecture of public education in Connecticut,” said Torre. Many of the voluntary integration initiatives are controversial, Bermúdez Zimmerman said.  Sheff technically only covered the Hartford area, but other Connecticut municipalities including New Haven also became “part of the broader statewide educational response shaped by Sheff,” according to Torre. Integration has stalled in schools in New Haven. Busing students away from their neighborhoods to go to school costs the city millions each year.  John DeStefano, New Haven’s mayor from 1994 to 2014, said Sheff brought “visibility” to issues of education and inequality. However, when Sheff was decided in 1996 and a settlement made in 2022, “I don’t know that it was a dramatic shift.” “I always largely saw it as a school finance case. I didn’t think we were going to change town lines. And I didn’t think we were gonna override local zoning,” DeStefano said. “I think in New Haven, it expressed itself in the heavy direction toward magnet school programs we took. At least during my time in office, we had the largest out-of-district school enrollment in the state of Connecticut for years.” Thirty years after the Connecticut Supreme Court’s decision in 1996, Brown’s Promise and the Segregation Tracking Project released a yearly report earlier this June that ranked Connecticut 11th worst in the nation for racial segregation in its schools and sixth for economic segregation. The report mentions Sheff: “The region has become a strong — if still imperfect — example of policies and practices that allow students to enroll across district lines” because of Sheff, the report reads.  “I am super appreciative that the Connecticut Supreme Court found in our favor. That was the opening of the door,” Sheff said. Torre said he remembers people celebrating the court’s decision by “dancing in the streets.” However, many say that Sheff never had as much of an impact as advocates had hoped. “When they punted it over to the General Assembly, I think that was a mistake,” Sheff said. “I would have liked stronger oversight from the Supreme Court.” She said that although Sheff has given many families more options, the past 30 years have been about “playing politics” rather than developing equitable policy.  Bermúdez Zimmerman was 2 years old when lawyers first filed suit. She said they wanted children as plaintiffs both because state policy would impact students most, and for “longevity” of the case. The intention was that “we as children would then see it through,” she said. “The court case is part of our ecosystem. It’s a catalyst.”  Of Sheff now, Bermúdez Zimmerman — who works as the coalition director for Child Care for CT — added, “I don’t have kids in the public school system, so it doesn’t weigh on me like it might on my sister.”  “Where There Are Racist Outcomes, There Are Racist Policies” For decades, teachers and public school advocates have come up with their own visions for education post-Sheff in Connecticut.  Sheff said she seeks “regional education,” or drawing school districts wider. “I’ve been saying this for 36 years,” she said. “Money is tight everywhere. There is opportunity for diversity and inclusion in the classroom in a regional setting.” Torre wants a “holistic” approach to ameliorating education outcomes in New Haven and Connecticut, he said, one that considers “relationships that form between the teacher and the students, between teachers and parents, among students, among the neighbors in the community,” as central to how schools function. “One of the central policy tensions today is how to support integrated school options without weakening neighborhood schools. That is a real concern,” Torre said. “Magnet schools and Open Choice programs can create important opportunities, but they do not automatically solve the problems facing neighborhood schools.” Bermúdez is running in the 97th District Democratic Primary against Leland Moore, the current Ward 18 alder and an assistant state attorney general. When asked about how he would address issues of education if elected as a state lawmaker, Moore mentioned his advocacy for adjusting the Education Cost Sharing (ECS) formula for inflation, and allocating additional funding to the city’s Board of Education and Youth at Work. The ECS formula guides the state’s distribution of funding to public schools, and currently has a foundation amount of $11,525 per student. “Connecticut ranks near the bottom nationally in the state share of education funding and near the top in reliance on local funding, worsening inequities between communities. Without a stronger state partnership, municipalities will continue facing difficult trade-offs that impact students and taxpayers alike,” Moore wrote in testimony for a recent biennial budget proposal from Gov. Ned Lamont, which he presented at a February Appropriations Committee hearing. Many other city officials, including Mayor Justin Elicker, NHPS Supt. Madeline Negrón, and city teachers union President Leslie Blatteau, also pushed for an increase in ECS funding in the spring.  Bermúdez mentioned ECS as a priority in her campaign as well: “I want an even more intensely funded bill,” than the recently passed budget bill, she said. “The ECS formula needs to be fixed as it is insufficient and does not even keep up with inflation,” Bermúdez wrote in an email to the Independent.  She also said she wants to see more funding for public schools and “anti-racism education,” as well as “strong parent teacher organizations at each school.”  “Anti-racism education in the suburbs is a must. Connecticut can claim it is progressive, but with all deliberate speed should not mean 70 years. Having the 49th most segregated educational outcomes in the country tells us that people in Connecticut are very comfortable with racist outcomes. And where there are racist outcomes, there are racist policies,” Bermúdez wrote in an email to the Independent. “Bussing can reduce segregation, but we must ask ourselves, how is it working?” Bermúdez wrote that she would support “a much stronger version” of an early childhood education bill that recently passed the state House of Representatives, which already includes a $10 million grant for special education services so some students do not have to travel as far for programming, among other funding increases.  “Our public schools cannot provide high quality education if we don’t adequately support our teachers and public education professionals,” Moore said. “I’ve heard concerns about high healthcare premiums and not being able to afford a house or apartment. I’ve also heard concerns about staffing levels, school maintenance, and having to pay for school supplies out of pocket.” He also said schools should “take a hard look” at busing costs, and potentially reallocate that funding to “reinvestment” in neighborhood schools. Financing school districts, funding education, and integrating schools are “generational issues,” DeStefano said. “Legislatures are limited in what they can do, depending on the state administration.” For him, the role of a legislator is to “be a voice for a vision that says success for one group does not come at the expense of another group,” especially for the issues Sheff covers, like education outcomes.  “Integration is a responsibility, and we failed at it,” Bermúdez said. “We’ll start in New Haven. We have to increase representation.” The post From Sheff v. O’Neill To The 97th District Race appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less