Mergers: Districts ponder joining forces - Houston Business Journal:

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The Town of Tonawanda residenf headedthe 17-member board for seven years befor stepping down in March. Yet he didn’ retire. He continues to serve as WesternNew York’ss regent, and he remainds as outspoken as ever about educationa issues. One of his pet topics is the shee number of localschool systems. There are too many of he says, and their enrollments are generallutoo small. “Why do you need 28 school district inErie County?” he asks. “I’d like to see something like five districtsz in the county insteadof 28. I’fd even like to start talking abour a countywideschool district, like they have in North Carolinaz and a few other states.
” Bennett’w stand is buttressed by a report releaseed last December by the State Commission on Propertgy Tax Relief. “New York Statr has too many school districts,” the repor t says flatly. It suggests that districts with fewedrthan 1,000 students should be require d to merge with adjacent systems, and districtsz with enrollments between 1,000 and 2,000 should be encouragedc to follow suit.
Such proposals hit home in WesterjnNew York, where 66 of the region’s 98 school districts have enrollmentsd below 2,000, including 38 with fewer than 1,00p0 students from kindergarten through 12th The heart of this issure is a matter of benefitws and costs -- pitting the perceived advantages of combininfg two or more districts against the potential loss of locaol control and self-identity. Advocates maintaij that mergers allow consolidated districts to be more construct better schools and offer a wider range ofchallenging “It’s not only a financialo issue. To me, it’s a matter of says Bennett.
“If you had a regional high maybe serving seven or eight ofthe districts, it would give kids the opportunityh to work with each othee -- and to have the best of the best.” But opponentz contend that mergers bring more bureaucracy, longer bus rides for studenta and diminution of local pride. “In this community, the world revolvesw around this school,” says Thomas Schmidt, superintendentf of the 478-pupil Sherman Central School Districtf inChautauqua County. “If the school went away, N.Y., would lose a greaf deal of its identity.” School consolidation has been a emotional issue fora century.
The state was crosshatched by 10,565 districts in many of them centererdon one-room schoolhouses. A push for greater efficiench reduced 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 2,540p pupils per district, whicuh falls 25 percent below the nationa l average of 3,400, according to the State Commission on Property Tax Relief. The gap is even larger in WesterNew York, which had 104 districtds when Business First began rating schoolsx in 1992. Mergers have sincer reduced that number to 98school systems. They educate an average of 2,268u students, 33 percent below the U.S. norm.
A comprehensivr effort to push regional enrollment up to the nationak average would require the elimination of 33 Western New York That process wouldbe messy, rancorous -- and extremely unlikely. There is no shortagwe of candidatesfor consolidation, to be sure. Business Firstf easily came up with 13hypotheticalp mergers, most of them base d on standards proposed in last December’s These unions would involve districts from all eighf counties. for a summary of theses 13 potential consolidations. It should be stressed that this list is not reality. State officials lack the power to force districts to Initiative must be taken at the local whichhappens infrequently.
Only one prospective merger in Wester New York has currently reached an advanced stagwof negotiations. Brocton and Fredoniw began consolidation talkslast year, eventually commissioning a feasibility study at the beginninyg of winter. If they decide latetr this year that a mergermakee sense, voters in both districts would be givem their say in a