New London — Local school officials are seeking a statewide standard on the racial isolation requirements that determine state funding for magnet schools.

New London Superintendent Manuel Rivera testified before the state Education Committee last week on “a bill that would eliminate a double standard that currently exists, in determining eligibility for those magnet funds that have already been budgeted.”

State Rep. Chris Soto, D-New London, proposed the bill that would apply the so-called Sheff definition of a “reduced-isolation setting,” which sets compliance requirements for the racial makeup of the students at a magnet school, to all of the approximately 90 interdistrict magnet schools across the state.

In 1996, the Connecticut Supreme Court, in Sheff v. O’Neill, ruled that the racial, ethnic and economic isolation of Hartford public school students violated their right to a “substantially equal educational opportunity” under the state Constitution. It led to voluntary efforts to provide better integration, such as magnet schools, the Choice Program and other initiatives, according to a report by the Office of Legislative Research.

While districts creating magnet schools like New London have benefitted from state school construction dollars, the non-Sheff magnet schools are held to a different standard when it comes to the definition of a “reduced isolation setting.”

Rivera said in his testimony that Sheff schools meet the racial enrollment standard when 75 percent or less of the enrollment is African American or Hispanic. The rest of the students may be composed of other races that include white, Native American, Pacific Islanders, Asian or mixed races, for instance.

Non-Sheff schools like New London, however, must meet a different standard in which at least 25 percent of students must identify as only white.

In order to obtain state magnet funds, the schools also must have at least 25 percent of the student population come from outside the district. The out-of-district students are chosen in a blind lottery and so race or ethnicity is not considered.

“Schools in communities with high concentrations of African American and Hispanic/Latino students, such as Bridgeport, New Haven and New London, must not only meet enrollment expectations ... they must also meet a racial balance criteria that is different than the magnet schools in the Hartford region...” Rivera testified.

The different standard is a higher bar to achieve, Rivera testified, and “threatens our ability to access the magnet funds that are so essential to meeting the demand of families in our region, a racially and ethnically diverse region.”

New London’s transformation into all-magnet school district also makes the school district inherently different with new magnet schools, or portions of the schools, continually coming online that will have to meet the requirements or forfeit additional state funding, according to Kate McCoy, New London’s Executive Director of Strategic Planning and Magnet School Development.

“We are held to the same standards of accountability for academic measures, yet we have this discrepancy in one key measure: calculation of racial isolation,” she testified.

Magnet schools in New London receive $7,085 from the state for every out-of-district student brought into the district. The district charges sending towns a $3,000 tuition. The state provides an additional $3,000 for every New London student if the district has hit its enrollment requirements.

It has taken some maneuvering on the part of the school district to obtain the additional state magnet school funding.

The district was forced to apply for a waiver two years ago for the Nathan Hale Arts Magnet School because it did not hit its targets. It was a one-time waiver and when the school did not hit its target the following year, it lost $1.2 million, or $3,000 for the 400 New London students attending the school.

Last year the district was successful in pushing for a special legislative act that dropped the required amount of white students from 25 to 22 percent across the district. The act was not needed for Nathan Hale but was applied instead to the Arts Magnet Middle School, which was in its first year. C.B. Jennings Dual Language and International Elementary Magnet school’s kindergarten and first grades will come online later this year and will again have to meet requirements for those two grade levels to get the additional state funding.

McCoy said it is not necessarily about additional state dollars, it is about “equal access to dollars.”

Dianna Wentzell, commissioner of the state Department of Education, submitted testimony on the bill in which she said she agreed with the proposed bill’s goals but not necessarily the language.

“We support unifying the desegregation standard for the state in accordance with the Sheff standard,” she said, but not linking the bill to a 2013 stipulation in the Sheff agreement that expires in June.

Soto said he and others will be working on tweaks to the language of the bill before it moves forward.

“Overall I think they were receptive to the idea,” Soto said of the Education Committee. “When you get down to the meat of what we’re trying to accomplish, it’s about equity.”

g.smith@theday.com