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Courting Equality

Three Yale law students ask the state of Connecticut to set a standard for public education

By Karen B. Manahan

When Rich Molinaro was in high school, a few of his teachers compensated for underfunding in unorthodox ways. “I had a teacher who picked up roadkill for biology class,” the retired high school teacher recalls, “just so we could see what that particular animal was all about.” Forty years later, observing his granddaughter Jada’s fourth grade class in Danbury, Conn., Molinaro says, “I still see teachers bearing the financial burden of teaching and having to buy supplies.”

Further south in Bridgeport, it’s no different. “[Schools] are struggling to provide textbooks,” says Nekita Caroll- Hall, who has two kids in public school. “I know their education is being impacted, and they’re worthy of the same education that our wealthy counterparts are giving to their children.”

Yale law students, Kate Dominguez (N.Y.C. ’03), Sabria McElroy (Greater Philadelphia-Camden ’05), and Nick Pyati (N.Y.C. ’05) couldn’t agree more. As members of the Education Adequacy Project, a clinic supervised by Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization, they are working with parents and guardians like Molinaro and Caroll-Hall, and with the Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding, to hold the state to a clause in its constitution that mandates state provision of “free and public schools.”

“Our case,” Pyati explains, “is [asking] is there some sort of minimum suitability that the state needs to set? Or is it simply providing a building for a school and that counts?” Citing the stark disparities in resources and graduation rates between the state’s affluent and poor districts, the EAP brought four charges to the Connecticut Supreme Court last October. Three of the claims addressed whether public schools must meet a minimum standard of quality, and the fourth dealt with funding and resource inequities between high- and low-income districts.

Dominguez, who has worked on the case for two years, says her time in the corps gives her unique insight into the struggles of her constituents. “We all had the experience of maxing out our credit cards at Staples trying to make up for what our districts were lacking,” she says. “The state will say, ‘Things are fine—there’s no need for more funds.’ It’s easy having been a teacher to say, ‘No, something is missing here.’ I can fill in the different ways [that a lack of] resources impacted my teaching that aren’t apparent on the surface.”

The EAP’s case suffered a setback when the judge dismissed the three claims related to quality. “One of the state’s arguments was that maybe the schools aren’t that good, but it’s not for the court to decide. It’s for citizens to agitate and get the government to change,” Pyati says. “This is such a cruel joke. If you’re a parent with two, maybe three jobs and you’re trying to pay rent, [the idea] that you’re going to have time to form a lobbying group to get this to change is unreasonable.”

The law students are preparing an appeal and plan to meet in the coming year with parents, teachers, and community members to garner support and compile evidence. McElroy, who will become the project’s codirector (with Pyati) next year, admits she sometimes gets frustrated with the establishment. The state is “so willing to make excuses rather than provide the resources,” she says. “People at the top lose sight of the ultimate goal. We should all have the same goal, and we don’t.”

In the meantime, the fight is on. “We’re learning as we go,” Pyati says. “We’re giving the state a run for its money.”