Racial Imbalance Plan

To provide a contextual background for families who may be new to Fairfield, or Connecticut, school systems are expected to maintain a minority balance at all schools which closely mirrors the minority balance of the school district as a whole. The threshold for compliance to this law written in 1969 is defined in State Board of Education Regulations as not exceeding 25 percentage points more or less than the comparable proportion for the school district. McKinley’s official minority percentage as reported at the end of the 2015-2016 school year was 47.90%. The school district as a whole was reported to have 20.70% of the student population in K-12 reporting as minorities. Hence, the difference between the school district and McKinley was 27.20% which put us out of compliance by 2.2%. The school district was required to provide an updated Racial Imbalance Plan as a result of this 2.2% difference.

McKinley was first identified as racially imbalanced by the Connecticut Board of Education in April 2007. For a decade, the school district has consistently worked to comply with our submitted and approved plans. While the plans have not resulted in significant shifts in the percentage, the plan has made a difference and our percentage would be higher without our on-going efforts.