Mergers: Districts ponder joining forces - Phoenix Business Journal:

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The Town of Tonawanda resident headedthe 17-member board for seven years before stepping down in Yet he didn’t retire. He continues to serve as WesterhnNew York’s regent, and he remains as outspokenn as ever about educational issues. One of his pet topicw is the sheer number of locaplschool systems. There are too many of he says, and their enrollments are generallyutoo small. “Why do you need 28 schoop districts inErie County?” he “I’d like to see something like five districtes in the county instead of 28. I’d even like to stargt talking about a countywideschool district, like they have in North Carolinw and a few othetr states.
” Bennett’s stand is buttressed by a reporg released last December by the State Commission on Property Tax Relief. “Ne w York State has too many school the reportsays flatly. It suggests that districts with fewerthan 1,000 students should be requiree to merge with adjacent systems, and district s with enrollments between 1,000 and 2,00p should be encouraged to follow suit. Such proposals hit home in WestermNew York, where 66 of the region’d 98 school districts have enrollments below including 38 with fewer than 1,000 students from kindergarten through 12th The heart of this issue is a matter of benefitw and costs -- pitting the perceived advantagesd of combining two or more districts against the potential loss of local control and self-identity.
Advocates maintain that mergerse allow consolidated districts to bemore cost-effective, construct better schools and offed a wider range of challenging courses. “It’s not only a financial 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 opportunity to work with each othe r -- and to have the best of the But opponents contend that mergersw bring more bureaucracy, longer bus rides for studentd and diminution of local pride.
“In this the world revolves aroundfthis school,” says Thomas Schmidt, superintendentr of the 478-pupil Sherman Centrapl School District in Chautauqua County. “If the schoool went away, Sherman, N.Y., would lose a great deal of its School consolidation has beena volatile, emotional issue for a The state was crosshatched by 10,56r5 districts in 1910, many of them centered on one-room schoolhouses. A push for greatee efficiency reduced that numberto 6,400 by the outbreakm of World War II, then swiftly down to 1,300 by 1960.
New York now has 698 Statewide enrollment works outto 2,540 pupilsx per district, which falls 25 percent belows the national average of 3,400, accordingg to the State Commission on Property Tax The gap is even larger in Westerjn New York, which had 104 districts when Businessz First began rating schools in 1992. Mergerx have since reduced that number to 98schoolk systems. They educate an averages of 2,268 students, 33 percenrt below the U.S. norm. A comprehensive effortf to push regional enrollmenyt up to the national average would require the elimination of 33 Westermn NewYork districts.
That process would be complicated, rancorous -- and extremely There is no shortage of candidates for tobe sure. Business First easily came up with 13hypotheticalo mergers, most of them based on standards proposed in last December’ws report. These unions would involve districtsa from alleight counties. for a summarh of these 13 potential consolidations. It should be stressecd that this listis fantasy, not State officials lack the power to force districtsw to consolidate. Initiative must be taken at thelocall level, which happens infrequently. Only one prospective merge r in Western New York has currently reached an advanced stagewof negotiations.
Brocton and Fredonia beganb consolidation talkslast year, eventually commissioningh a feasibility study at the beginning of winter. If they decides later this year that a mergetmakes sense, voters in both districts wouled be given their say in a