“Sheff v. O’Neill Complaint” is a legal complaint filed by ten-year-old Milo Sheff and seventeen other Hartford school children, all acting through their parents, which claims that the state of Connecticut has denied their right to an equal education, as is guaranteed to them in the state constitution. This complaint, filed on April 26, 1989, argues that not only has Connecticut tolerated school districts that are racially, ethnically, and socioeconomically segregated, but that the state has played a major role in creating and maintaing isolated residential communities.
The plaintiffs identify the defendants as William O’Neill, Governor of the Connecticut, Gerald Tirozzi, Commissioner of Education of Connecticut, Franciso Borges, Treasurer of Connecticut, J. Edward Caldwell, Comptroller of Connecticut, and several members of the State Board of Education.
The complaint begins with a statement of facts regarding the racial disparity between Hartford and its surrounding suburbs, citing that while the state’s population is made up of 12.1% black school-age citizens, 44.9% of the students in the Hartford school district are black. Sheff also cites statistics about single-parent households, children with limited English proficiency, and families receiving federal aid in order to argue that Hartford operates at a “severe educational disadvantage in addressing the needs of all students” (Sheff 11).
Under the section titled “An Unequal Education,” the complaint cites the percentages of students in Hartford and 21 other suburbs who fall below the State Department of Education’s “mastery benchmark” level on the Statewide Mastery Tests. The data shows that Hartford students, on average, performed strikingly worse than suburban students. Sheff also insists that the integration of city and suburban schoolchildren would benefit all students, not only those in Hartford, because blacks, Hispanics, and poor children make up such a large part of the state population.
The complaint offers numerous examples of Connecticut’s “longstanding knowledge of these iniquities,” as well as its “failure to take effective action” (16, 22). For example, Sheff points to exclusionary zoning as one of the most prominent housing barriers affecting Hartford schoolchildren’s education, arguing that Governor O’Neill and his predecessors “failed to take action to afford meaningful racial and economic housing within school zones” (Sheff 22).
Generally, Susan Eaton’s description of the Sheff complaint reflects the original document’s text. She discusses test scores, overall school quality, and the benefits of school integration. One difference between her book and the actual legal complaint is that while The Children in Room E4 goes into great depth about the current state of Hartford education, using a vivid and touching narrative, the document spends much more time referencing past malfeasances the state had already committed in regards to ignoring educational inequality and obstructing any attempts to remedy the issue.
Discussion Questions:
Do you agree with the decision to mainly choose plaintiffs who live in Hartford, or do you think this case could have benefitted from citing more students both inside and outside the city?
Sheff proponents face many criticisms from those who belief that while de jure segregation is wrong, de facto segregation should not be remedied by the government. Do you think Sheff could have predicted these criticisms and rewritten part of the complaint to address these concerns in advance?
Could Sheff have benefitted from a more specific definition of school integration?