A traditional educational program used for decades by a number of Connecticut school districts might be a component for common ground after the divisive tenor surrounding Guilford’s educational curriculum that dominated the town’s recent elections.

The Open Choice program, which allows for students from differing districts the ability to swap schools, is now being discussed.

Open Choice is a program within a complicated and tiered system of the state’s education system that permits students to attend out-of-district schools, effectively allowing students from less diverse, more affluent municipalities like Guilford to attend districts with more diverse student bodies, and vice versa.

According to the State of Connecticut’s educational website, “The Open Choice program allows urban students to attend public schools in nearby suburban towns. It allows suburban and rural students to attend public schools in a nearby urban center. Enrollments are offered by school districts on a space-available basis in grades K-12. Lotteries are used to place students when there are more applications than spaces available. The program includes Hartford, Bridgeport, and New Haven and their surrounding districts.”

These programs can result in positive benefits for students from both municipalities, according to several studies and long-term data collected by the state. The result being that simple interactions and opportunities create a platform for compassion and understanding.

Those on both sides of Guilford’s discussion of race-based educational programming and social equity curriculum seem to agree that Open Choice would be a good way to address concerns of parents.

Superintendent of Schools Dr. Paul Freeman said he believes Open Choice is an excellent and data-driven program that provides positive results where it has been implemented and would likely do so in Guilford as well.

“I think it’s been an enormously successful program around the state,” said Freeman. “And I think that lessening the segregation that exists in our schools is a positive thing. We know that we’ve got population centers that concentrate the populations of students of color in some communities, and then you’ve got other communities like Guilford where we have a predominately White student body.

“We’ve had a lot of conversation in the last couple of years about diversity being a strength, and if we can increase diversity in our community, that benefits all students in our schools,” he continued. “It benefits students of Guilford to go to school in a more diverse setting, and it’s not just something that will benefit students who we might open seats up to, if Guilford were to participate in that program.”

Freeman said his office was in discussions about the possibilities of Open Choice in 2019, when the pandemic hit. According to Freeman, the fact that schools were closed and going virtual and the impracticality of transporting students across the shoreline during the unknowns and restrictions imposed during the pandemic lockdown made program implementation unfeasible.

“I cannot find a time that Guilford previously participated in this program,” said Freeman. “In early 2019, 2020 I had reached out to ACES [Area Cooperative Educational Services, the State entity that oversees aspects of Open Choice] to begin exploring the program and looking at details of Guilford’s possible participation in that program. The pandemic certainly slowed the work down. We ended up having to shift our focus. We had scheduling and supporting and keeping students who were already enrolled safe and healthy.

“We did commit to continuing our equity work in the district, but we focused on those components that we could do in house with students who were already enrolled,” he continued. “The pandemic definitely made it more challenging to talk about enrolling a significant new group of students from a community other than Guilford, especially in early 2020 when we didn’t know anything about this pandemic.”

However, Freeman said his office is still optimistic about the possibilities of implementing Open Choice, stating it would be an excellent construct to assist the district in its efforts to diversify Guilford’s schools and keep the conversations about race and equity at the forefront of its mission.

“Diversity is a strength,” Freeman said. “We have heard from graduates of Guilford schools say that they have gone out into a more diverse settings, whether those be places of work, communities in which they move to live, or schools they attend, and that they did not feel as well prepared to move into that more diverse world as they could have been. So, the work we’ve done is important—talking about diversity, talking about historic and systemic racism, talking about how to be an open and supportive community is important—but actually diversifying the community is a positive as well.

“Bringing in a more diverse teaching staff and working on ways to bring in a more diverse student population is good for everybody. I am really excited to find out that there is some interest in the community for this,” Freeman continued. “I recently have had some members of the community reach out to me to express interest in Open Choice and to re-engage in those conversations. There’s a lot of work to do to move in that direction, but it’s an exciting opportunity.”

Guilford parent Bill Maisano, who ran unsuccessfully for the BOE this past November, has a degree in education and was a Guilford police officer for close to two decades, including serving as DARE officer. He said he and other parents upset about aspects of the town’s school curriculum are also excited about the potential of Open Choice.

Maisano had written to Freeman to share his concerns about the curriculum, but said he realized he also needed to propose solutions, as well.

“Danielle [Scarpellino] had mentioned what she had learned about Open Choice and I thought, ‘What a great a solution. Here is something tangible,’” Maisano recounted. “Going from something that is a theory, to something that is tangible. The only way you get to real change in this world is meeting your brothers and sisters. If you meet these people, you learn their experience, you create lifelong friendships with them. You learn their backgrounds, what they like, what they don’t like. This could be something that they are really looking for to bring change to this town. Why wouldn’t we do this? It would be terrific if this was implemented.”

Scarpellino, who also ran unsuccessfully for the BOE last November, concurred with Freeman and Maisano that inter-racial and inter-economic opportunities that Open Choice could provide would produce a positive impact for all of Guilford’s students.

“When we won the [Republican] primary, I realized, wow, I might be in a position where I would be asked, ‘What can you bring to table?’” Scarpellino said. “So, if we have an issue with race and diversity and inclusion, what would be the most obvious thing to try and aid our town in that issue? And I thought bringing inner-city kids to our town to go to our schools, and have these children interacting with Guilford children and hearing their stories, and expressing themselves and getting these kids familiar with people who aren’t like them—that’s the whole point.

“Open Choice was a program I found out about, and I thought, ‘Why wasn’t this an obvious choice from the beginning?’” she said. “This is an answer, introducing this to our schools. Introducing kids from different races, different socio-economic backgrounds into our schools is an obvious answer to me. I feel if that this had been looked at years ago, we would not be having this problem today. We would not have graduates going off to college saying ‘We didn’t know anything about anything.’”

Scarpellino is adamant that Open Choice would be an excellent opportunity for the town’s students.

“Heck yeah, I’m for this. The thought of it sends shivers up my spine. To me…you’re going to get a real rich diversity through a program like Open Choice and it’s a no brainer to me,” Scarpellino said.

There are some issues that would have to be addressed before implementation of the program. Overlapping agencies and a dense system of oversight would need to be reconciled, but Freeman said he and the Board of Education are familiar with navigating the state educational bureaucracy.

The idea is not without critics, and even Freeman acknowledges that simply implementing Open Choice won’t be a panacea for Guilford’s struggle to come to terms with its lack of diversity, but it could be important step.

“I really am excited that community members have expressed an interest in this. To me that’s evidence that the conversations we’ve been having the last year and a half, two years is really rooted in the community,” Freeman said. “For community members to be stepping up and suggestions this is a positive move is exciting to me and I really appreciate that people are expressing an interest in this opportunity.”

There are costs involved, too, but as these programs are only available if space is open, most districts will actually receive funds by adding students.

The numbers are a bit difficult to quantify, but according to state statistics, more than 3,000 Connecticut students were enrolled in an Open Choice program last year. The Hartford and New Haven area see the largest participation, but a number of towns across the state are sending and receiving students through the program.