From today's New York Times: "Schools in Hartford and 22 of its suburbs would be encouraged to open more classroom seats to children from outside their neighborhoods in order to increase racial diversity, under a tentative settlement reached Friday in a decades-old desegregation case."

The settlement, the latest development in Sheff v. O'Neill, is for an entirely voluntary plan. The goal: "to get at least 41 percent of Hartford's minority students into schools where enrollments are no more than three-quarters minority," the Times story says. Connecticut state legislators and a state court would have to approve the plan.

A Cheektowaga school's new discipline policy also makes today's Times. Students at the Cheektowaga Central Middle School are being banned from all after-school activities if their grades fall below 65 or if they misbehave, the Times reports.