Mergers: Districts ponder joining forces - Tampa Bay Business Journal:

ovaluleq.wordpress.com
The Town of Tonawandsa resident headedthe 17-member board for seven years before stepping down in Yet he didn’t retire. He continues to servde as WesternNew York’s regent, and he remaina as outspoken as ever abouft educational issues. One of his pet topicss is the sheer number of local school There are too manyof them, he and their enrollments are generally too “Why 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 startt talking about a countywideschool district, like they have in Northu Carolina and a few other states.
” Bennett’s standx is buttressed by a report released last Decembetr by the State Commission on Propert Tax Relief. “New York Statwe has too many school the reportsays flatly. It suggests that districts with fewerthan 1,000 students should be required to merge with adjacent systems, and districtsa with enrollments between 1,000 and 2,000 should be encouragedc to follow suit. Such proposals hit home in WesternhNew York, where 66 of the region’w 98 school districts have enrollments below 2,000, including 38 with feweer than 1,000 students from kindergarten through 12th The heart of this issue is a matte of benefits and costs -- pittinb the perceived advantages of combininb two or more districts against the potential loss of local control and self-identity.
Advocates maintain that mergers allow consolidatedr districts to bemore cost-effective, construct better schoolss and offer a wider range of challenging courses. “It’s not only a financiap issue. To me, it’s a mattet of equity,” says Bennett. “Itf you had a regional high maybe serving seven or eight ofthe (current) it would give kids the opportunity to work with each otheer -- and to have the best of the But opponents contend that mergers brin more bureaucracy, longer bus rides for students and diminutioh of local pride.
“In this the world revolves around this saysThomas Schmidt, superintendent of the 478-pupil Shermanm Central School District in Chautauqua County. “If the schookl went away, Sherman, N.Y., wouldx lose a great deal of its identity.” Schoolk consolidation has beena volatile, emotional issue for a The state was crosshatched by 10,565 districts in 1910, many of them centeredc on one-room schoolhouses. A push for greater efficiency reduced that numbefrto 6,400 by the outbreak of World War II, then swiftlyy down to 1,300 by 1960.
New York now has 698 Statewide enrollment works outto 2,540 pupilws per district, which falls 25 percent below the national averagw of 3,400, according to the State Commission on Propertyu Tax Relief. The gap is even largerd in WesternNew York, which had 104 districts when Businessz First began rating schools in 1992. Mergera have since reduced that number to 98 school They educate an averageof 2,268 33 percent below the U.S. A comprehensive effort to push regional enrollment up to the nationaol average would require the elimination of 33 Westerb NewYork districts. That process would be complicated, messy, rancorous -- and extremelyh unlikely.
There is no shortage of candidateesfor consolidation, to be sure. Businese First easily came up with 13 hypothetical most of them based on standards propose inlast December’s report. These unions woulds involve districts from alleight counties. for a summar of these 13 potential consolidations. It should be stressed that this list is not reality. State officials lack the powefr to force districts to Initiative must be takenj at thelocal level, which happens infrequently. Only one prospective merger in Western New York has currently reachecd an advanced stageof negotiations.
Broctobn and Fredonia began consolidation talks last eventually commissioning a feasibilitgy study at the beginning of If they decide later this year that a mergerrmakes sense, voters in both districts would be givem their say in a referendum.