Groton – Building larger elementary schools and redrawing boundaries alone will not be enough to create and maintain racial balance in Groton, a consultant told the School Facilities Initiative Task Force Thursday.

The district will also need magnet programs to draw students back and forth between neighborhoods around Carl C. Cutler and West Side middle schools, said Mike Zuba, educational consultant with Milone & MacBroom.

The finding is key because the plan to build a single middle school to replace Groton's two existing middle schools and to build two large elementary schools is intended partly to correct racial imbalance.

The state cited the district last year for an imbalance at Claude Chester Elementary School, which had a minority population of 68.2 percent at the time. In response, Groton presented its plan to build one new middle school and convert the existing middle schools into elementary schools as the district's solution. The State Board of Education accepted the plan in January.

Zuba said it will work, but will require magnet programs. Superintendent Michael Graner said New London has proved magnet programs successfully attract students, as they've drawn children from Groton.

"We know people are willing to cross the river by the hundreds," Graner said.

Groton has a window of about seven years to make its racial balance plan work.

The task force voted 10-1 Thursday to stay with its plan, which would build one new middle school for 938 students in grades 6 to 8 on the Merritt property near Robert E. Fitch High School, construct two new elementary schools for 600 students each in pre-kindergarten through grade 5 on the sites of West Side and Cutler middle schools, and demolish the existing middle schools.

The plan would cost about $191.7 million, with a net cost to Groton of about $94.8 million, according to updated project costs. Three older schools - S. B. Butler, Claude Chester and Pleasant Valley elementary schools - would close.

Task force member Jane Dauphinais cast the sole vote for a different approach - build one middle school for the whole town and make minimal repairs to convert the existing middle schools to elementary schools. She said she's concerned about investing millions in schools in their current locations as the racial imbalance issue persists.

Groton has struggled with racial balance for more than 10 years because it is polarized east and west. Of 348 children in kindergarten through grade 5 living within a half-mile of West Side Middle in Groton City, about 74 percent are minority students. Eighty percent are eligible for free or reduced-priced lunch, the consultant said.

By comparison, of the 184 students living within one mile of Cutler in Mystic, 23 percent are minority students and 12 percent qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, the consultant said.

Town Councilor Joe de la Cruz said Groton is becoming more racially mixed, yet the state continues to unfairly categorize children.

"Where does it stop?" he said, adding that soon the district would have to "end up going to New Hampshire" to find nonminority students.

School Board member Andrea Ackerman said she hears about what's best for the state, the taxpayers and the budget, but not for the kids.

The school board should build one middle school and deal with its elementary schools later, she said, saying Groton doesn't have an imbalance. She then paraphrased a comment by Charles Dickens' character Mr. Bumble in the book "Oliver Twist."

"If that is what the law thinks, then the law is a ass," Ackerman said. The character in the book actually says, "If the law supposes that . . .the law is a ass — a idiot."

The state considers a school out of balance if its percentage of minority students deviates by 25 percent or more from the district average. Groton has an average of 43 percent minority students at the elementary level.

Since the town is geographically polarized, the plan is to build large enough elementary schools to accommodate neighborhood children and still have enough space to draw students from elsewhere.

Groton's earlier attempt to fix an imbalance by using a magnet program failed because it didn't do this, task force members said.

The town built Catherine Kolnaski Magnet School too small, task force members said. The school then filled with children from the immediate neighborhood and the district didn't have room for magnet students.

"Before it opened, it failed," Graner said. But he said he believes programs like a performing arts magnet at Northeast Academy, or a dual language program at a school that serves mainly military students, would do well. Graner said he's also given thought to making every elementary school in Groton a magnet school.

Zuba urged the task force to view the racial balance law as an opportunity to improve education. It would allow the district to get up to 80 percent reimbursement for one of its two new elementary schools. The other school would receive the reimbursement rate Groton qualifies for at the time of construction. In 2015, the rate for new school construction is 48.57 percent.

"We're going to take this mandate, and we're going to turn it into a positive," Zuba said.

The consultant plans next to help the group create a community survey to learn whether residents support the plan or what direction they do support.

d.straszheim@theday.com

Twitter: @DStraszheim