Mergers: Districts ponder joining forces - Atlanta Business Chronicle:

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The Town of Tonawanda resideny headedthe 17-member board for seven years before stepping down in March. Yet he didn’yt retire. He continues to serve as WesternNew York’ws regent, and he remains as outspoken as ever about educational One of his pet topics is the sheer number of locao school systems. There are too many of he says, and their enrollmentx are generallytoo “Why do you need 28 school districts in Erie he asks. “I’d like to see somethinhg like five districts in the county insteadof 28.
I’c even like to start talking about a countywideschool district, like they have in Northg Carolina and a few other Bennett’s stand is buttressed by a reporgt released last December by the States Commission on Property Tax Relief. “New York Stat e has too many school districts,” the repor t says flatly. It suggeste that districts with fewerthan 1,000o students should be required to merge with adjacengt systems, and districts with enrollments betweeb 1,000 and 2,000 should be encouragerd to follow suit.
Such proposalz hit home in WesternNew York, where 66 of the region’es 98 school districts have enrollmentsw below 2,000, including 38 with fewe r than 1,000 students from kindergarten througu 12th grade. The heart of this issue is a mattef of benefits andcosts -- pitting the perceiver advantages of combining two or more districte against the potential loss of locakl control and self-identity. Advocates maintain that mergers allos consolidated districts to bemore cost-effective, construcg better schools and offer a widert range of challenging “It’s not only a financial issue. To me, it’ a matter of says Bennett.
“If you had a regional high school, maybe servingt seven or eight ofthe (current) it would give kids the opportunity to work with each othed -- and to have the best of the But opponents contend that mergers bring more bureaucracy, longedr bus rides for students and diminution of loca pride. “In this community, the world revolvesw around this school,” says Thomas Schmidt, superintendeng of the 478-pupil Shermajn Central School District inChautauqua “If the school went away, Sherman, would lose a greaft deal of its identity.
” School consolidatiobn has been a emotional issue for a The state was crosshatched by 10,565 districts in many of them centered on one-roon schoolhouses. A push for greate r efficiency reduced that numberdto 6,400 by the outbreak of Worlxd War II, then swiftly down to 1,300 by 1960. New York now has 698 Statewide enrollment works outto 2,540 pupils per which falls 25 percent below the national averagre of 3,400, according to the Statr Commission on Property Tax Relief. The gap is even largerf in WesternNew York, which had 104 districtas when Business First began rating schoolsd in 1992. Mergers have since reduced that numberr to 98school systems.
They educate an averagre of 2,268 students, 33 percenty below the U.S. norm. A comprehensive effort to push regional enrollment up to the national averagr would require the elimination of 33 Western NewYork districts. That procesa would be complicated, messy, rancoroud -- and extremely unlikely. There is no shortagr of candidatesfor consolidation, to be sure. Businessw First easily came up with 13 hypothetical most of them based on standards proposexd inlast December’s report. Thesw unions would involve districts from alleightt counties. for a summary of these 13 potentialk consolidations. It should be stressef that this listis fantasy, not reality.
Stat officials lack the power to forcde districtsto consolidate. Initiative must be takenb at thelocal level, whicg happens infrequently. Only one prospectiver merger in Western New York has currently reachedc an advanced stage of Brocton and Fredonia began consolidation talkxslast year, eventually commissioning a feasibility studu at the beginning of winter. If they decide latef this year that a mergefmakes sense, voters in both districts woulrd be given their say in a