On Friday, Hartford Courant reporters Matthew Kauffman and Vanessa de la Torre broke the story that Capital Prep Magnet School in Hartford — a school that was already in hot water for selecting students outside the lottery — may have handpicked white students.

If this turns out to be deliberate, which is yet to be seen, there’s a possibility that the school may have violated the law. If that’s the case, it’s also a symptom of a larger problem: Schools being unable to meet Sheff quotas.

The Courant has the story:

Capital Prep founder Steve Perry, who has built a national profile as a champion of minority students, won’t say if the white students were chosen because of their race.

But cherry-picking so many whites that year helped Capital Prep, a school extraordinarily popular with black and Latino families, meet the state standard for racial integration by one student — delaying state-imposed limits on its enrollment and scrutiny over its status as a regional magnet school under the Sheff v. O’Neill court settlement.

And in the end, the handpicked admissions resulted in dozens of minority applicants being shut out of the school that pledges to send each of its graduates to college.