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After decades of low test scores, legal fights, and soaring drop-out rates, the Hartford Public School system is trying to reset its course. The reforms have not been incremental. Nine new schools opened this school year, five closed, and more changes are coming.

Superintendent Steven Adamowski delivers his State of the Schools address on Thursday.

A lot is different about Hartford Public High School this fall. The thing that stands out to junior Frederick Gray is the quiet.

“Like, last year it was like, you could be in the hall. It was like the teachers didn’t really care what you were doing. But this year, as you can hear, nobody’s really in the halls. Everybody goes to classes, 90 minutes classes.”

Another change is that Gray is not officially a student at Hartford Public. The second-oldest public high school in the country doesn’t really exist anymore, other than as a building.

It now holds four separate academies with their own principals – one for ninth graders, and three for tenth to twelfth grades organized around different broad topics – law and government, nursing, or engineering and green technology.

The teaching staff also got overhauled. 

"Initially the teachers struggled to understand why."

Zandralyn Gordon leads the new nursing academy. Last year she was the principal of Hartford Public as a whole, and she had to ask all her teachers to reapply for their jobs.

"So towards the end of the school year was extremely challenging because teachers were unsure of whether or not they going have a job in September, where are they going to be. And even for myself, it was challenging, but this year, it was well worth it."

She says the teachers that were rehired are focused and motivated.

Schools and their teachers now have to show they can raise student performance, or face consequences.

Steven Adamowski says it was a different story when he came on as superintendent two years ago.

"No matter how poorly a school did, the school would just be funded every year and all the adults would have jobs and continue to do the same unproductive things they did previously. Now, it's very clear that if you stay open as a school, you stay open because you're improving or you're serving students well and you're at the proficient level or above, so these are big cultural shifts."

Test scores were up in Hartford last year, but there's a long way to go. Reading proficiency rates still lag behind the state averages by around 30 points.

If schools raise those test scores and attendance rates, they earn more autonomy from the district  - over how they spend money and whom they hire.

Adamowski's hoping this will create a network of small, rigorous schools, where students and families can pick the one that matches their interests.

"Our going to an all-choice system was based upon the commitment to have equity and have an entire portfolio of good schools that we could off the public."

But there are competing definitions of equity in Hartford. A nearly two-decades long legal battle has focused on achieving racial equity. Less than seven percent of Hartford students are white, and a new settlement in the Sheff v. O’Neil case aims to increase classroom diversity.

But Adamowski finds that goal somewhat at odds with what he's after. He wants to focus solely on classroom achievement, no matter what students look like.

"Our underlying assumption is that we can have effective schools in a city, and that it does not require a minority student to sit next to a white student in order to excel."

He wants to compete with the special integrated programs outside Hartford that have been set up to comply with the lawsuit.

That’s not in violation of the settlement, because another way to comply is for Hartford to decrease demand for the integrated programs, even if its schools do not meet racial diversity targets.

"When those large numbers of Hartford parents are not asking to have alternatives outside of the city, at that point, we've created a viable school system that's meeting their needs."

The district continues to have big plans. Over the next ten years, it wants to renovate Weaver High School on Hartford's north end to create a campus for 5 new small schools.

Next fall, seven new or redesigned schools will open.

One of them will be an Insurance and Finance academy funded with 300-thousand dollars from local insurance companies. Adamowski says that shows that this attempt at reform in Hartford schools has buy in from the local business community.

The changes have also impressed student Marsabel Santiago. She's a junior in the Law and Government academy. She failed tenth grade and had to retake it.

“Now I’m an A student. I really am. Straight As.”  

She says the same kind of turnaround is possible across the district.

"I believe if we work hard enough it's possible. And I think this was the first step in doing that. And I am so proud of this school. I am so proud to say that I’m a Hartford High Student right now, and that I’m in the law and government academy, it’s not even funny. I’m proud to say that."

Hartford Superintendent Steven Adamowski delivers his state of the schools address Thursday morning at the Learning Corridor Theater in Hartford.