Law on Racial Diversity Stirs Greenwich Schools | NYTimes.com ← NPE News Briefs: GREENWICH, Conn. — Just a few minutes’ drive from the polo fields, the fieldstone walls guarding 10-acre estates and the Greenwich Country Day School, from which the elder George Bush graduated in 1937, is far denser terrain, where the homes are smaller and closer together and part of a public housing complex that seems escaped from New York City.
This, too, is Greenwich, and the two public elementary schools in this part of town look, demographically, nothing like most schools in the whiter, wealthier areas. At both, minority students make up at least two-thirds of the enrollment, including some students who are the children of housekeepers, landscapers and construction workers who keep up the lavish homes in the backcountry.
And that is putting the town on a collision course with the State of Connecticut.
Segregation within school districts is not unique to Greenwich — one need look no farther than New York City to find mostly white schools a few blocks from mostly black schools. But Connecticut is one of a few states that forbid districts from letting any of their schools deviate too much in racial makeup from any of their other schools.
