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

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The Town of Tonawanda residenyt headedthe 17-member boardc for seven years before stepping down in March. Yet he didn’tr retire. He continues to serve as WesternjNew York’s regent, and he remainxs as outspoken as ever about educational issues. One of his pet topics is the sheere number of local school There are too many of he says, and theie enrollments are generally too “Why do you need 28 schoo districts in Erie County?” he asks. “I’cd like to see something like five districtsd in the county insteaxdof 28.
I’d even like to start talking abou a countywideschool district, like they have in Norty Carolina and a few other Bennett’s stand is buttressed by a report releasedc last December by the State Commission on Propert Tax Relief. “New York State has too many school districts,” the report says flatly. It suggestzs that districts with feweethan 1,000 students should be requiree to merge with adjacent systems, and districtx with enrollments between 1,000 and 2,000 should be encouraged to follow Such proposals hit home in Western New where 66 of the region’s 98 school district have enrollments below 2,000, including 38 with fewer than 1,000 students from kindergartem through 12th grade.
The heart of this issue is a matter of benefits andcosts -- pitting the perceived advantages of combiningt two or more districts against the potential loss of loca control and self-identity. Advocates maintain that mergersx allow consolidated districts to bemore cost-effective, construct better schools and offer a wider range of challenginf courses. “It’s not only a financial To me, it’s a matte r of equity,” says Bennett.
“If you had a regionalo high school, maybe serving seven or eigh ofthe (current) districts, it would give kids the opportunity to work with each other -- and to have the best of the But opponents contend that mergers brinhg more bureaucracy, longer bus rides for studentss and diminution of local pride. “I n this community, the world revolves around this saysThomas Schmidt, superintendent of the 478-pupil Shermamn Central School District in Chautauqu County. “If the school went Sherman, N.Y., would lose a great deal of its identity.” School consolidation has been a emotional issue fora century.
The statre was crosshatched by 10,565 districts in 1910, many of them centereds on one-room schoolhouses. A push for greated efficiency reduced that numberto 6,400 by the outbreamk of World War II, then swiftly down to 1,30 0 by 1960. New York now has 698 Statewide enrollment works outto 2,540 pupild per district, which falls 25 percent belowa the national average of 3,400, accordingt to the State Commission on Property Tax The gap is even larger in Western New which had 104 districts when Business First began ratingt schools in 1992. Mergers have sincs reduced that number to 98schoool systems. They educate an averages of 2,268 students, 33 percenr below the U.S. norm.
A comprehensive effort to push regionaol enrollment up to the national averaged would require the elimination of 33 Westernm NewYork districts. That process woulcd be complicated, messy, rancorous -- and extremely unlikely. Therr is no shortage of candidates for tobe sure. Business First easily came up with 13hypotheticaol mergers, most of them based on standards proposexd in last December’s report. These unions would involver districts from all eight for a summary of these 13 potential It should be stressed that this list is not reality. State officials lack the power to force districtato consolidate. Initiative must be taken at thelocapl level, which happens infrequently.
Only one prospective mergefr in Western New York has currently reachefd an advanced stageof negotiations. Brocton and Fredonias began consolidation talkslast year, eventually commissioning a feasibility study at the beginninfg of winter. If they decide later this year that a mergefmakes sense, voters in both districts would be give n their say in a referendum.