Groton May Redraw Boundaries Around Catherine Kolnaski Magnet School

Groton will likely have to redraw the boundaries around Catherine Kolnaski Magnet School and send students now attending the school elsewhere to correct the racial imbalance, Superintendent Paul Kadri said Monday.

Groton was called before the State Board of Education in January because the elementary school has a minority population of 60.3 percent. A school is considered racially imbalanced if the minority population is greater than 25 percentage points above the district average. Groton's district average in the elementary grades is about 35 percent.

The district has until the end of this month to present a plan to correct the imbalance.

Kadri told the Groton Board of Education Monday night that the state looks for long-term solutions, so shuffling a few students won’t work, even though the school is within about a dozen children of being deemed compliant.

“A solution that just gets us one-year compliant is not going to fly,” he said.

The board’s committee of the whole listened to the option, but will not make a decision until the coming weeks.  Representative Town Meeting reconvenes at 7 p.m. Wednesday in the Groton Senior Center to set the education budget, and school officials are bracing for cuts, which could affect their decision.

The most likely option now would be to redraw the boundaries around Kolnaski school to make the immediate neighborhood that attends the school smaller. Students outside those new boundaries would be sent to other elementaries next year if that plan is adopted.

This would free up space in the school to allow more students from other parts of town to attend because of the magnet programs.

Groton made Kolnaski a magnet school to encourage non-minority students to enroll. But the school also draws largely from the neighborhood; Kolnaski and West Side Middle School, which is 53.6 percent minority, are near Branford Manor Apartments, a subsidized housing development.

Board Member Beverly Washington questioned whether the magnet concept is really working.

“I don’t think it’s doing what we want it to do,” she said.

Board member Rita Volkmann said she thinks the school would attract more students if it brought back a preschool program.

“That is one of the reasons it became imbalanced,” she said. However, the districts options to increase programs such as preschool may be affected by the outcome of budget talks.