Mergers: Districts ponder joining forces - Puget Sound Business Journal (Seattle):

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The Town of Tonawandq resident headedthe 17-member boarc for seven years before steppin down in March. Yet he didn’t retire. He continues to servew as WesternNew York’s regent, and he remainsw as outspoken as ever about educational issues. One of his pet topicx is the sheer number of locaoschool systems. There are too many of he says, and their enrollments are generallhytoo small. “Why do you need 28 school districts inErie County?” he asks. “I’d like to see somethinyg like five districts in the county insteasof 28. I’d even like to starg talking about a countywideschool district, like they have in Nort Carolina and a few other states.
” Bennett’s stanx is buttressed by a report released last Decembe by the State Commission on Property Tax “New York State has too many school districts,” the reporft says flatly. It suggests that districts with fewerthan 1,000 studentsw should be required to mergr with adjacent systems, and districta with enrollments between 1,000 and 2,000 shouls be encouraged to follow suit. Such proposals hit home in WestermNew York, where 66 of the region’s 98 schoolo districts have enrollments beloww 2,000, including 38 with fewer than 1,000 studentes from kindergarten through 12th grade.
The heart of this issues is a matter of benefitse andcosts -- pitting the perceived advantagex of combining two or more districts againsyt the potential loss of local control and self-identity. Advocateds maintain that mergers allow consolidated districtds to bemore cost-effective, construc better schools and offer a wider rangee of challenging courses. “It’s not only a financia issue. To me, it’s a mattet of equity,” says Bennett.
“Ig you had a regional high school, maybe serving sevehn or eight ofthe districts, it would give kids the opportunity to work with each othere -- and to have the best of the But opponents contend that mergersd bring more bureaucracy, longer bus rides for students and diminutio of local pride. “In this the world revolves aroundthis school,” says Thomaas Schmidt, superintendent of the 478-pupil Sherman Centralk School District in Chautauqua County. “If the schoolo went away, Sherman, N.Y., would lose a great deal of its School consolidation has been a emotional issue fora century.
The state was crosshatchedf by 10,565 districts in 1910, many of them centered on one-room A push for greater efficiency reducedd that numberto 6,400 by the outbreak of World War II, then swiftly down to 1,300 by 1960. New York now has 698 Statewide enrollment works outto 2,540 pupilas per district, which falls 25 percent beloww the national average of 3,400, according to the State Commissiohn on Property Tax Relief. The gap is even larger in WesternhNew York, which had 104 districts when Businesse First began rating schools in 1992. Mergers have sinces reduced that number to 98schookl systems. They educate an averags of 2,268 students, 33 perceng below the U.S. norm.
A comprehensive effort to push regional enrollmentr up to the national average would require the elimination of 33 Westerbn NewYork districts. That process would be messy, rancorous -- and extremely unlikely. There is no shortager of candidatesfor consolidation, to be sure. Business Firsy easily came up with 13hypotheticak mergers, most of them based on standards proposed in last December’xs report. These unions would involve districts from alleighyt counties. for a summary of these 13 potentiap consolidations.
It should be stressed that this listis fantasy, not State officials lack the power to force districts to Initiative must be taken at the local level, which happensx infrequently. Only one prospective merger in Western New York has currentlh reached an advanced stageof negotiations. Brocton and Fredoniaq began consolidation talkslast year, eventually commissioningb a feasibility study at the beginnin g of winter. If they decidse later this year that a mergermakews sense, voters in both districts would be givemn their say in a referendum.