Open Book – School choice in CT cuts both ways

Today Online
Jun 21
5 min read

Updated: Jun 23

• Commentary • This article has won an SPJ award in 2025 and first appeared in our monthly Today Magazine

Originally published: June 16

By Noelle Simone Blake

Special to Today Magazine

Editor’s Note

• All students in Connecticut have school choice via Greater Hartford's Regional School Choice Office aka RSCO — the program has served thousands of students, giving viable educational choices to all youth in Connecticut • Yes, every student in the Constitution State has the option of applying to attend a public school outside their hometown or regional district, with three primary options — an Open Choice school, a theme-focused magnet school or a technical high school •

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• Open Choice allows students to attend a public school outside their municipality of residence — this program was established in 1966 as Project Concern, one of the nation’s first voluntary school desegregation initiatives • After the Connecticut Supreme Court's landmark Sheff v. O'Neill school desegregation ruling in 1996, Project Concern rebranded as Project Choice, and later as Open Choice •

• Noelle Blake is uniquely qualified to write about Open Choice — she is a Hartford resident who attended Avon schools from kindergarten on, graduating from Avon High in 2022 • Blake now attends Dartmouth College, an Ivy League school in New Hampshire •

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THE CONNECTICUT Open Choice Program has been pivotal to my development as a student and an individual.

After the Connecticut Supreme Court Sheff v. O’Neill ruling in 1996, the state of Connecticut took measures to ensure equal opportunity for all of its citizens, one of which was an updated school choice program. Now called Open Choice, this program allows Hartford residents like myself to attend public schools with better funding and resources in suburban districts.

Through Open Choice, I attended Avon Public Schools from kindergarten through 12th grade. Over the course of 13 years, Avon became somewhat of a second home to me. Though my double-life was not nearly as exciting as the phrase implies, living and having stake in two different environments greatly impacted me intellectually and emotionally.

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Undoubtedly, Avon provided me with educational opportunities that I wouldn't have been afforded in Hartford. Because of Avon Public Schools, I had the resources I needed to succeed and the mentors to challenge me. Had it not been for Avon, I probably wouldn’t have ended up at Dartmouth College, my undergraduate institution.

As thankful as I am for the life that the Avon school system has afforded me, it also exposed me to many adversities.

Although a welcoming community, Avon’s environment dramatically shaped my identity as a person of color. As a Black student in Avon, I experienced racial profiling from authority figures, outright racist remarks from young peers and many microaggressions. I don’t say these things with resentment — the fact that these behaviors are products of Avon’s environment further proves the need for the diversification of the community in order to combat bias and ignorance.

Nevertheless, those incidents — most of which occurred before I was 13 — have stuck with me, enough so that equity and justice work became one of my primary intellectual pursuits and a major life focus.

There’s also a dissonance that comes with being an Open Choice student, a disconnect that no one was fully able to prepare me for or warn me about. The success of the program, the students, is dependent on their ability to assimilate — as much as I was educated in school, I was socialized. I specifically remember a moment in the third grade after school, when my best friend (also an Open Choice student) and I were speaking to a teacher we both liked and trusted.

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As my friend recounted a story, the teacher corrected her speech: “Not ax — ask,” she said. Though grammar is important, speech is a subjective part of culture. The way my friend pronounced the word “ask” was the same way her family and friends pronounced it. The pronunciation didn’t change its meaning in context, nor did it affect her ability to be understood.

Though this moment was harmless in essence, it changed me. I remember it because for me, “ax” permanently became “ask.” Years of these adjustments and concessions of culture later became a point of contention between myself and my Hartford peers.

Somehow, I had become a traitor and a stranger for choosing to assimilate — a choice that was never really mine to begin with, considering Open Choice’s goal.

My experience as an Open Choice student has assisted me greatly in my academic and personal development. Today, most of my close friends are people I met while attending school. For these reasons, I’ll always be grateful for the program. At the same time, there are challenges that come with the experience. In the formative years of my life, I was faced with conflicting ideas of being, and paths that seemed to move further from one another as I got older.

I know for a fact that I have been made better off because of my experiences in Avon, but I also live with the knowledge that along the way, part of my cultural identity was permanently altered. +

Noelle Blake is an editor for The Mirror, a weekly magazine published by The Dartmouth, the student newspaper of Dartmouth College — this Today article has won a first-place award in the 2025 contest of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) Connecticut chapter — she has received two other SPJ awards for her work in Today Magazine

This article originally appeared as a key component of the January 2024

cover story in Today Magazine, our monthly publication

• Today Online version • Today Magazine version

• Blake's other SPJ award-winning Today articles:

• Why being ‘not racist’ is not enough

• Student’s-eye view of school during COVID

Today Online and Today Magazine feature community news that matters nationwide and aim to record Connecticut’s underreported upside — covering the heart of the Farmington Valley and beyond

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Open Book – School choice in CT cuts both ways

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