I recently read Judge Thomas Moukawsher’s decision in the Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education vs. Rell case which was decided this month. In general, I applaud Judge Moukawsher for exposing the irrationality of Connecticut’s public school policies and funding.

Skeptics might say that the decision will do little to improve Connecticut’s schools. Yet my own schooling was heavily influenced by a very similar case decided in the Connecticut Supreme Court almost exactly 20 years ago.

In the 1996 decision of Sheff v. O’Neill, the state supreme court ruled that the state was required to address inequities in school funding in Connecticut’s schools. Less than a year later, the legislature passed a three-part response to Sheff. This response advocated for the creation of interdistrict magnet and charter schools that reduced socioeconomic, ethnic, and racial isolation found in the state’s public schools.

I benefitted greatly from attending schools that were supported and developed in response to this legislation. In second grade, my parents took me out of Mile Creek Elementary School in Old Lyme to send me to the Regional Multicultural Magnet School in New London. I loved RMMS. I remember a map of where families in the school were from; I noticed how I had schoolmates from nearly every continent on the map. I remember studying the one-square-kilometer around our school; we visited and studied Sheffield Pharmaceuticals, the gingko trees at Williams Park, and the post office. Later I attended the Interdistrict School for Arts and Communication, which was founded one year after the Sheff decision. Looking back, I think attending schools that celebrated our local community and our diversity inspired me to make educational equity the focus of my life’s work.

Research on the state’s interdistrict magnet schools suggests that these schools benefited my peers as well. By comparing students who won lottery slots to those who did not at interdistrict magnet schools in New Haven, Waterbury and Hartford, a study published in 2009 found that city students attending these schools showed higher reading and math achievement on standardized test scores, while both suburban and city students showed higher reading achievement.

The legacy of Sheff v. O’Neill lives on in the form of New London’s Magnet School Pathways. For full funding, 25 percent of students in the schools must be from a suburb, and judging from my own experience, more suburban families should consider these magnet options. In today’s world, understanding and relating to people different from yourself is a crucial skill. The social isolation found in Connecticut’s schools hurts white and middle-class families too.

Judge Moukawsher’s decision takes a courageous stand against inequality in our public schools. As we know from Sheff, so much good may come out of it.

Peter Cipparone is an Old Lyme native and a former fourth-grade teacher in the New York City Public Schools. He is currently a doctoral student in education at the University of Michigan.