The Lacio Drom project seemed to be quite promising, especially because its presence could have helped in accelerating and easing the process of integration of Roma children (and their families) into the bigger communities in which they were living. However, in the early 1980s, Lacio Drom classes started being closed, because they were evidently failing in boosting social integration.

That of reconstructing the final years of Lacio Drom classes is a relatively easy task, because the founding organizations planned and sponsored multiple meetings, in which teachers and school deans reported on a regular basis about the implementation of the project in each school involved. 

The first available reports date back to the 1970s, and some of the main issues had already been identified at that point, since the first Lacio Drom classes had been active for six years already. Many observers and teachers mentioned, among other things, the challenges related to linguistic barriers, given that there were only few teachers who were able to speak or understand some basic Romanì. At the same time, Roma pupils had just begun learning Italian, and not many of their parents were fluent enough to have an entire conversation in this language. 

Additionally, some interviews conducted with the parents of non-Roma children who were attending the same schools as Roma pupils clearly showed that the attempts at fostering integration and tolerance towards Roma families were failing. For these reasons, already in the 1970s Lacio Drom classes were partially reshaped to increase the number of hours that Roma and non-Roma children would have spent together. The main goal was to promote the simultaneous participation of both groups of pupils to the same classes, and to leave Lacio Drom classes open, but to use them only if that was necessary to strengthen the knowledge and learning progresses of Roma children. This was, however, a potentially problematic decision: indeed, many times Roma and non-Roma pupils who were attending the same classes were not equal in age, which often led to the presence of “teenagers in classes full of little children” (adolescenti in classi di bimbetti). Clearly, such an age gap could have interfered negatively on the learning outcomes of both Roma and non-Roma students, even though teachers often seemed to be unaware of these age differences.

Another challenging topic was the consistent participation of Roma children to classes, whether Lacio Drom or ordinary ones. Obviously, Roma children had to follow their families through all of their transfers, making it difficult for a Roma pupil to attend the whole academic year at the same place, with the same classmates and teachers. According to the data collected by the organizations which ran the Lacio Drom project, in the academic year 1975-76 out of 128 enrolled and recorded Roma children in schools, only 72 of them went to school for the whole year, whereas the remaining 56 left the school after different periods of time, ranging from less than one month to six/seven months.

Surveys on Roma participation and on their attendance levels was not only helpful to discuss how involved Roma children and families were into this project, but it is also functional to dig deeper into the question of socialization between Roma and non-Roma children. As a matter of fact, the sudden decision by Roma families to move elsewhere, often after their children had just attended a couple of weeks of school, drastically hampered their possibility to build any meaningful ties with their non-Roma classmates. Similarly, whenever a new Roma pupil would join the class after the school year had already begun, he or she would have encountered massive difficulties in adapting to the already existing group dynamics within the class.

Moreover, as it had been underlined by many people in the 1970s, the number of Roma children in the class was also a crucial factor to form new friendships with non-Roma classmates: indeed, if there was only one Roma pupil in a class, he or she would have been induced to seek ties with non-Roma students. Vice-versa, if two or more Roma pupils were in the same class, students would likely split between Roma and non-Roma.

Notwithstanding this first round of changes, a paper written in 1978 on the results achieved by Lacio Drom classes kept discussing the same issues as before, probably as a sign that these new measures were not sufficient to substantially improve the level of education offered to Roma children. In said paper, Bruno Nicolini (the priest who founded the Lacio Drom classes) highlighted how these special classes would often become an easy way to marginalize Roma pupils, even unvoluntarily, because Roma students could only interact among themselves and with the teacher assigned to their class. At the same time, however, it emerges that Nicolini was fully aware of the problems linked to a complete merge of Roma and non-Roma students: indeed, he mentions both how distant that model of school still was from Roma needs, as well as how drastically unprepared the whole school system was to take care of Roma children. 

In addressing the then Ministry of Education, he repeatedly pointed out that one of the main reasons why Lacio Drom classes were failing was the persistent prejudice and intolerance against Roma that kept on being displayed by the Italian society. Therefore, he strongly advocated for a change in the Italian schooling system so as to fit Roma children's needs better: for example, he proposed to carry out surveys across all Italy to learn more about teachers' biased behavior and attitudes towards Roma pupils, and to start a public campaign to educate all citizens to mutual respect and fraternity.

Unfortunately, Nicolini's requests remained largely unheard: indeed, the Italian Ministry of Education seemed largely uninterested in solving the challenges highlighted by him and his team throughout the years. Therefore, since Lacio Drom classes were no longer fulfilling the purpose of helping Roma children to integrate into Italian society, the only conceivable solution was to close them. The process of dismantling these special classes began officially in 1978-79, and lasted until the mid-80s, when the last active classes were closed permanently. 

This program died out between the late 1970s and early 1980s, and after that, no other project was created or implemented in Italy, at least in a formal way. Two main lessons can be drawn by looking back at the Lacio Drom project almost fourty years after its conclusion: first, that it surely was a groundbreaking attempt at improving the living conditions of Roma families; second, that notwithstanding the obstacles encountered during its implementation, we should still pay credit to the job done by Bruno Nicolini and all those who believed in this project. Moreover, keeping the memory of Lacio Drom alive can also be functional for future advocates or activists who may be willing to start a similar project, either in Italy and elsewhere, knowing already the pros and cons of creating special classes for Roma children in schools.