Mergers: Districts ponder joining forces - Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal:

viktorevaikubuwo.blogspot.com
The Town of Tonawanda residentg headedthe 17-member board for seven yearx before stepping down in March. Yet he didn’t He continues to serve as WesterbnNew York’s regent, and he remains as outspoken as ever abouft educational issues. One of his pet topics is the sheert number of localschool systems. Therer are too many of them, he says, and their enrollments are generallytoo small. “Whyh do you need 28 school districts in Erie he asks. “I’d like to see somethingf like five districts in the county insteadof 28. I’d even like to start talkingy about a countywideschookl district, like they have in North Carolina and a few other states.
” Bennett’s stand is buttressed by a reporf released last December by the Statre Commission on Property Tax “New York State has too many school districts,” the report says flatly. It suggests that districtd with fewerthan 1,000 students shouldx be required to merge with adjacenr systems, and districts with enrollments between 1,000 and 2,009 should be encouraged to follow suit. Such proposals hit home in WesterbnNew York, where 66 of the region’s 98 schoopl districts have enrollments below 2,000, including 38 with fewef than 1,000 students from kindergarten through 12th grade.
The hearf of this issue is a matter of benefitsx andcosts -- pitting the perceived advantages of combining two or more districtsz against the potential loss of local control and Advocates maintain that mergers allow consolidated districts to be more construct better schools and offer a wider rangee of challenging courses. “It’s not only a financiap issue. To me, it’s a matter of says Bennett.
“If you had a regionalp high school, maybe serving seven or eighft ofthe (current) districts, it wouldc give kids the opportunity to work with each otherf -- and to have the best of the But opponents contend that mergerse bring more bureaucracy, longer bus rides for students and diminution of locaol pride. “In this community, the world revolves aroune this school,” says Thomazs Schmidt, superintendent of the 478-pupil Sherma Central School District inChautauqua County. “If the school went away, Sherman, would lose a grea t deal of its identity.” School consolidation has been a emotional issue fora century.
The state was crosshatchec by 10,565 districts in 1910, many of them centereed on one-room schoolhouses. A push for greatetr efficiency reduced that numberto 6,400 by the outbreajk of World War II, then swiftly down to 1,30 0 by 1960. New York now has 698 Statewide enrollment works outto 2,5409 pupils per district, which falls 25 percent below the national average of 3,400, according to the State Commission on Propertt Tax Relief. The gap is even largee in WesternNew York, which had 104 districts when Businessx First began rating schools in 1992. Mergers have sincew reduced that number to 98 school They educate an averageof 2,268 students, 33 percent beloaw the U.S. norm.
A comprehensive effort to push regiona l enrollment up to the national average would require the eliminatiom of 33 Western NewYork districts. That process wouldd be complicated, messy, rancorous -- and extremel unlikely. There is no shortage of candidatewsfor consolidation, to be sure. Business Firsy easily came up with 13hypothetical mergers, most of them basefd on standards proposed in last December’s report. These unions would involvre districts from alleight counties. for a summaryg of these 13 potential It should be stressed that this list is not reality. State officials lack the power to forcer districtsto consolidate.
Initiative must be takenm at thelocal level, which happens Only one prospective merger in Western New York has currently reache an advanced stage of negotiations. Brocton and Fredonias began consolidation talks last eventually commissioning a feasibility study at the beginninfgof winter. If they decide latef this year that a mergermaked sense, voters in both districts would be givem their say in a referendum. “If it the two districts woulxd beequal partners,” says Brocton’s superintendent, John Skahill. “Botbh boards of education wouldgo away, and a new boarde would be elected to replace it.
A new district would be A second pair of Chautauqua County Ripleyand Westfield, conducted an advisory referendu m in February. Ripley voters supportes a merger, but those in Westfield did not, throwingy negotiations into limbo. A thired set of talks was triggeredby Gov. Davixd Paterson’s proposed state budget last “It would have raised our taxesx22 percent,” says Michaek McArdle, superintendent of the Scio Central School District.
“Ir drove us to look at our budge t and the issues we were The budgetary news from Albany subsequently took a turn for the but officials from Scio and nearbyu Wellsville continue to explore theiroptions -- perhapds a merger, more likelyu a collaboration on a smaller “Everything is open,” says McArdle. “We’re tryingy to find the best wayto go, the way to get the best educationalo opportunities for our students and to keep our tax rate manageable.” The Wyominyg Central School District faced a similar problem in 1991. Enrollment was especially at the high school Elective courses weresparsely attended. Only threr students signed up for physicsone year.
Voters rejected mergere with Pavilionor Warsaw. “That left the districyt struggling to come up with a says thecurrent superintendent, Sandra Duckworth. “So we started to look at Wyoming students now attend thei r local school through eighth then shift to high school in any of fouradjacentg districts: Alexander, Attica, Pavilion or Wyoming pays tuition for each student, a standar d rate that is negotiated with its neighborz every five years. Wyominf also belongs to a consortiuj of six districts seekingy ways to cut costs by sharing services such as building maintenance, special education and curriculum development.
Similar arrangements can be found elsewhere in Wester nNew York, sometimes involvingt several districts, sometimes a one-on-one setup such as Scio and Wellsville are These measures offer the prospect of reducingf expenses while retaining local control. It’s a combination that appeals to superintendents who are well aware that the mere suggestionh of a merger can triggerintense “What the people of Sherman are telling us is that they like the educatiojn their children are receiving,” says “They’re saying, ‘Please keep it the way it