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#929732 - 12/03/08 10:19 AM
Forced School mergers?
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Senecamom
Senior Member
Registered: 02/03/06
Posts: 7246
Loc: On a journey......
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ALBANY — School systems with fewer than 1,000 students would be forced to merge under a proposal before Gov. David Paterson, but small-district superintendents said Tuesday they have been improving efficiency and there are many barriers to consolidation.
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In a report presented to the governor this week, the state Commission on Property Tax Relief recommended that the roughly 200 districts with under 1,000 children be required to merge.
There are about 700 school districts in New York, far too many, according to the commission. Excluding New York City, the average district size is about 2,500 students, and the national average is 3,400 children. The smallest is New Suffolk on Long Island, with eight students.
There would need to be benefits for students, not just a cost savings, in a consolidation, said Richard Johns, superintendent of the Northeast school district in Dutchess County, which has about 900 kids.
“We're going to put a child on a bus at 7:00 in the morning and drive him 40 miles to school? It wouldn't make sense,” he said.
The property tax commission said the state has a “fragmented” education-delivery system. New York and other large states, including California, Texas and Illinois, rank high for total school districts and the number with fewer than 1,000 children. New York, however, has one of the lowest average school-district sizes of all the large states.
It's a different story in Florida, for example, which has 67 countywide school districts, the report said.
Other commission recommendations are to grant the state education commissioner discretion in merging school districts with fewer than 2,000 students each (taking into consideration enrollment trends, geography, tax burden and other factors) and encourage the sharing of services. Administrative consolidation but not full mergers might be practical in some areas, especially because of geography.
“Our position has always been that those decisions regarding mergers or consolidations are best left to local communities,” said David Albert, a state School Boards Association spokesman. “We do support the sharing of business and administrative functions like purchasing and payroll.”
Districts would have to consider many things before merging, Albert said, such as whether small class sizes could be maintained and if the new district would be located in the facilities of an existing district or in new buildings. The state should provide additional aid as an incentive, he said.
The commission's report notes that merged districts could expand course offerings like advanced placement classes and increase the number of sections in a specific subject area.
Johns said he supports regionalizing high schools.
“It makes sense. You can offer a whole lot more to high school kids. That's the grade levels that need specialization,” he said.
Johns said there is little research showing that consolidating would save money.
“I think the people who propose that stuff don't really understand what they're proposing. If they have a specific plan for regional high schools or a specific plan for regional operations or a specific plan for special education, I'm all for that,” he said.
Smaller school districts spend more money per pupil on overhead and other non-instructional expenses, and they spend more on instruction per student, the report said. The commission's analysis found that merging smaller districts could save as much as $7 for every additional student.
The Maxwell School at Syracuse University had similar findings, the report said. Consolidation would save two 900-pupil districts 7 percent to 9 percent and two 300-pupil districts about 20 percent. Based on the Maxwell findings, consolidating all of New York's districts with fewer than 900 students could save an estimated $159 million to $189 million.
In Schuyler County, the Odessa-Montour school district is the result of a merger in the 1950s.
“I certainly am open to ideas of consolidation as long as we are putting student needs first,” Superintendent James Frame said.
Most districts are already doing some form of administrative consolidation through their local board of cooperative educational services, Frame said. Odessa-Montour relies on BOCES for business functions and other services, he said.
“While I support saving taxpayer money, I think we need to have a lot of discussion and really investigate what the efficiencies would be and to make sure that we're serving students as positively as possible,” Frame said.
An attempted merger between the Bradford and Campbell-Savona school districts in Steuben County failed a few years ago, he said.
The Deposit, Broome County, and the Hancock, Delaware County, school districts conducted a consolidation feasibility study in 1993, Deposit Superintendent Bonnie Hauber said. Neither community wanted to go through with it, she said.
“As you know, there is a sacrifice for the autonomy of the district. In small towns especially, the school is the center of town, and so you would lose some identity,” she said.
Deposit saves a significant amount of money by using BOCES' central business office and getting cafeteria service through BOCES, Hauber said. It would be very expensive to consolidate transportation because Deposit and other districts cover large geographic areas, she said.
“We've talked recently about other ways to consolidate. It doesn't necessarily have to be a total blending of the two districts,” Hauber said, adding it could be sharing special-education services and using distance learning.
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#929742 - 12/03/08 10:32 AM
Re: Forced School mergers?
[Re: all seeing eye]
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Gold Member
Registered: 01/09/06
Posts: 17154
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Is a county school system possible?
By Alyssa Sunkin / The Citizen
Sunday, November 30, 2008 11:18 PM EST
A state commission has made a recommendation for school districts whose student population continues to decline, and it's a suggestion that some local superintendents are not dismissing.
A report released in June by the New York State Commission on Property Tax Relief, stated that of the 700 school districts throughout the state, over 500 have fewer than 3,000 students. It proposed that the consolidation of small districts into ones with at least 3,000 students would not only improve academics, but also be more fiscally responsible.
With student enrollment dropping steadily in all school districts within the Cayuga-Onondaga Board of Cooperative Educational Services and financial resources becoming scarce, some superintendents believe that there could be a consolidation of local districts sometime in the future if enrollment trends do not reverse.
At the same time, they view it as a continuation of a process they've already begun to employ using BOCES and the services it offers.
Two years ago, the Auburn Enlarged City School District and the Jordan-Elbridge Central School District expressed interested to BOCES about having a shared business office to process payroll and accounts payable, BOCES Assistant Superintendent for Business and Finance Dave Boyle said.
That spawned the Central Business Office, under the auspices of BOCES, to which currently five districts - Auburn, Jordan-Elbridge, Moravia, Port Byron, Southern Cayuga and Union Springs - subscribe.
“I think it stands as a great example of a cooperation in our county that has reduced the cost for our taxpayers and resulted in an enhanced operation for our school districts,” Boyle said. “It's an example of what people should expect.”
Jordan-Elbridge Superintendent Marilyn Dominick believes that shared services like the CBO are indicative of the ever-changing environment within the education structure.
“I think it's things like this that are precursors to what I believe will eventually happen, and that's full consolidation of school districts.”
Indeed, the report - also known as the Suozzi Report after the commission's chairman, Thomas Suozzi - noted that New York's education structure of 700 districts is in contrast to states that use a countywide system, like Florida, which has 67 districts.
The report maintains that larger districts could “take advantage of the economies of scale and administrative and operational efficiencies.” Also, larger districts could provide additional opportunities to students by offering a more diverse array of courses and more class sections.
“I could see a study of our nine districts,” Dominick said. “Could they be divided north and south and combined? I'm not saying that I'm promoting that, but I think things like that will be intense topics of conversation and probably should be.”
But Dominick, who also serves as a regional director for the Rural Schools Association of New York State, an advocacy group for rural school districts and taxpayers, noted that consolidation is not currently on the table and would not happen overnight.
“I don't know if it would even be in the next decade that we would look at complete consolidation, so those two or three districts who are naturally close to each other geographically would become one district,” she said. “But I do think there will be consolidation of a lot of other things within the geographic region.”
BOCES Superintendent Bill Speck said that districts might turn to BOCES in the future for shared transportation services or increase the prevalence of the Distance Learning program, which allows students and teachers to interact in real-time between classrooms no matter how far away.
Full consolidation, he said, is often a political issue, as loyalty to autonomous districts is entrenched within boards of education and the community it serves.
“But when looking at the times ahead, at some point you have to look at bare facts and see the writing on the wall while also making good decisions for kids,” he said.
Southern Cayuga Central School District Superintendent Mary Kay Worth certainly understands the community ramifications of combining districts, especially since she leads a district formed 40 years ago as a consolidation.
“We've come to learn that it will take generations before people accept that Southern Cayuga is the school in southern Cayuga County,” she said.
Additional to school spirit, she noted that school buildings are difficult to convert for other businesses and are oftentimes abandoned.
“It's hard that you still have empty buildings in the community,” she said. “It's a real issue and a real problem no matter where you are.”
Staff writer Alyssa Sunkin can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 239 or Alyssa.sunkin@lee.net
One man's opinion :
Combine them all
The Taxpayer Watchblog at auburnpub.com has advocated for a single Cayuga County school district, modeled after systems in states such as Maryland.
Read his proposals and debate them with him at auburnpub.com/blogs.
http://www.auburnpub.com/articles/2008/12/01/latest_news/latestnews01.txt
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#929748 - 12/03/08 10:47 AM
Re: Forced School mergers?
[Re: Senecamom]
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Gold Member
Registered: 01/09/06
Posts: 17154
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You don't have to worry about a SF/Waterloo merger. The mentality of the people in SF would never let that happen. They'd rather cut off their noses than cooperate with Waterloo on anything.
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#929930 - 12/03/08 03:48 PM
Re: Forced School mergers?
[Re: american girl]
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ponyk
Member
Registered: 11/06/08
Posts: 97
Loc: upstate
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oh come on lets share that beautiful college err high school campus in waterloo
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#929936 - 12/03/08 03:52 PM
Re: Forced School mergers?
[Re: ponyk]
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manofveal
Member
Registered: 08/30/08
Posts: 213
Loc: behind closed doors
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what about romulus??? i hear they are looking for someone to merge with
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#930186 - 12/03/08 08:13 PM
Re: Forced School mergers?
[Re: poohbear66]
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threeputt
Senior Member
Registered: 12/08/01
Posts: 2343
Loc: Waterloo
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Its too bad the W'loo-SF merger didn't happen. If it had, no one would think any thing of it by now and we'd all be a lot better off. Unfortunately, tribalism is the one thing that will trump money.
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