If John Ramos is anything, he's an upbeat cheerleader for Bridgeport's schools, an advocate extraordinaire for urban public education. His mantra, delivered with gusto since arriving here as school superintendent three years ago, has been "Expect Great Things."

So I was more than surprised to sit down at a table with him last week and hear him say in an uncharacteristic tone of dejection that "We spend a lot of time in this country ignoring kids of color, kids of poverty."

He lifted his head and asked, almost rhetorically, "Do we really want to educate children of color and children of poverty?" He paused, leaned forward as if he were tilting at the wind, and said, "if our commitment is absolute we will do it. But I'm not convinced."

This is the man charged with educating more than 20,000 students, most of them minority and poor.

He grew up in this city and he called to ask to meet with the newspaper's editorial board. He arrived with a gaggle of experts from and consultants to the state Department of Education.

The Cambridge report was in — reports on Connecticut's 12 most troubled (read urban) school districts and Bridgeport was not No. 12.

In the language of such documents Dr. Ramos: "has a sense of urgency about what needs to be done. He has inspired and motivated the district leadership team to embrace his sense of urgency." There is "a clearly articulated vision which focuses on closing the achievement gap between students from the lowest socio-economic

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background and those from more affluent parts within the district.

" . . . However, some decisions and actions taken to improve the quality of education for students have been impeded by a lack of funding."

That also has been his mantra. It takes more money than Bridgeport has to fund the teachers, social workers, textbooks, and other essential tools needed to educate all these students.

Maybe three years of efforts has drained him. It was only a couple months ago that a national study labeled his school district a dropout factory. And it's true the Bassick High School class of 2004 lost 40 percent of its students. The rate now is more like 25 percent not graduating — progress but still not good enough.

Anyone with a brain and two eyes knows there are still two Connecticuts. The affluent, mostly white suburbs and the poverty-stricken, mostly black and Latino big cities.

It was 19 years ago next month — 19 years ago — that Milo Sheff sued the state for equal educational opportunities. The state Supreme Court ruled in Sheff v. O'Neill in 1996 that there are two Connecticuts and it is wrong.

"We direct the legislature and the executive branch to put the search for appropriate remedial measures at the top of the respective agendas. We are confident that with energy and good will, appropriate remedies can be found and implemented in time to make a difference before another generation of children suffers the consequences of a segregated public school education," wrote Chief Justice Ellen Ash Peters for the majority.

Did I say the suit was filed 19 years ago?

Peters' ruling echoed the landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education. She wrote: "Children of every race and ethnic background suffer when an educational system is administered on a segregated basis. Education entails not only the teaching of reading, writing and arithmetic, but today, in our multicultural world, it also includes the development of social understanding and racial tolerance. If the mission of education is to prepare our children to survive and succeed in today's world, then they must be taught to live together as one people."

Did I say there are two Connecticuts?

The Sheff decision was specifically about Hartford and its suburbs, but a state Supreme Court ruling affects the entire state. So it is about New Haven and Waterbury and Bridgeport schools and their suburbs too.

John Ramos and other urban school superintendents can try as hard as they can to fight prejudice and poverty so that every child in Connecticut is educated.

But the problem, try as they might, cannot be solved by them alone.

All of us in all 169 towns have to help solve what is a societal virus that is so deep and so vicious that, indeed, another generation of school children has suffered the consequences of a segregated public school education.

James H. Smith is the editor of the Connecticut Post. You can reach him at 203-330-6325 or by e-mail at jsmith@ctpost.com.