Mergers: Districts ponder joining forces - Washington Business Journal:

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The Town of Tonawandq resident headedthe 17-member board for seven years before steppiny down in March. Yet he didn’y retire. He continues to serve as WesternNew York’s regent, and he remain s as outspoken as ever about educational One of his pet topicsz is the sheer number of local schookl systems. There are too many of he says, and their enrollments are generallytoo “Why do you need 28 school districts in Erie County?” he “I’d like to see somethingh like five districts in the countgy instead of 28. I’d even like to start talkinhg about a countywideschool district, like they have in Northj Carolina and a few otheer states.
” Bennett’s stand is buttressed by a reporft released last December by the Stats Commission on Property Tax Relief. “New York Statwe has too many school the reportsays flatly. It suggesta that districts with fewerthan 1,000 students should be required to merges with adjacent systems, and districts with enrollments betweehn 1,000 and 2,000 should be encouraged to follow Such proposals hit home in Western New where 66 of the region’s 98 schoool districts have enrollments below 2,000, including 38 with fewet than 1,000 students from kindergarten through 12th The heart of this issue is a matter of benefits and costs -- pitting the perceived advantagess of combining two or more districtes against the potential loss of locao control and self-identity.
Advocates maintain that mergers alloww consolidated districts to be more construct better schools and offer a wider range ofchallenginf courses. “It’s not only a financial issue. To me, it’ s a matter of equity,” says “If you had a regional high school, maybse serving seven or eight ofthe (current) districts, it would give kids the opportunity to work with each othefr -- and to have the best of the But opponents contend that mergers bringb more bureaucracy, longer bus ridesw for students and diminution of localo pride.
“In this community, the world revolves around this school,” says Thomads Schmidt, superintendent of the 478-pupil Shermahn Central School District inChautauqua “If the school went away, N.Y., would lose a great deal of its School consolidation has been a emotional issue for a century. The state was crosshatcheds by 10,565 districts in 1910, many of them centered on one-roomm schoolhouses. A push for greater efficiency reduced that numbeerto 6,400 by the outbreak of World War II, then swiftlg down to 1,300 by 1960.
New York now has 698 Statewide enrollment works outto 2,54o0 pupils per district, which falls 25 percentf below the national averag of 3,400, according to the Statde Commission on Property Tax Relief. The gap is even larger in Wester nNew York, which had 104 districts when Busineszs First began rating schools in 1992. Mergersa have since reduced that number to 98schoopl systems. They educate an average of 2,2687 students, 33 percent below the U.S. A comprehensive effort to push regionao enrollment up to the nationapl average would require the eliminationh of 33 Western NewYork districts.
That procesds would be complicated, messy, rancorous -- and extremely There is no shortagre of candidatesfor consolidation, to be sure. Businessz First easily came up with 13hypothetical mergers, most of them baseed on standards proposed in last December’s These unions would involve districts from all eighft counties. for a summary of thesd 13 potential consolidations. It should be stressed that this list is not reality. State officials lack the power to force districtxsto consolidate. Initiative must be taken at thelocalo level, which happens infrequently.
Only one prospectivee merger in Western New York has currentl reached an advanced stage of Brocton and Fredonia began consolidationb talkslast year, eventually commissioning a feasibilit y study at the beginning of winter. If they decids later this year that a mergermakes sense, voters in both districtsw would be given theird say in a