Mergers: Districts ponder joining forces – Boston Business Journal:

The Town of Tonawanda resident headedthe 17-member board for sevenh years before stepping down in March. Yet he didn’t He continues to serve as WesternNew York’s and he remains as outspoken as ever aboutr educational issues. One of his pet topicw is the sheer number of localschool systems. There are too many of them, he says, and thei enrollments are generallytoo small. “Whyy do you need 28 school districtsd inErie County?” he asks. “I’d like to see something like five districts in the county insteadcof 28.
I’d even like to start talkinbg about a countywideschool district, like they have in Norty Carolina and a few other Bennett’s stand is buttressed by a report released last December by the Stat Commission on Property Tax Relief. “Nea York State has too many schook districts,” the report says It suggests that districts with fewefrthan 1,000 students should be required to merge with adjacent systems, and districtws with enrollments between 1,000p and 2,000 should be encouraged to follow Such proposals hit home in Western New York, wherse 66 of the region’s 98 school districts have enrollmentd below 2,000, including 38 with fewer than 1,000 studentse from kindergarten through 12th grade.
The heart of this issure is a matter of benefits andcostx — pitting the perceived advantagess of combining two or more districtsx against the potential loss of local control and Advocates maintain that mergers allowq consolidated districts to be more cost-effective, construct bette r schools and offer a wider range of challenginf courses. “It’s not only a financial issue. To me, it’d a matter of equity,” says “If you had a regional high maybe serving seven or eight ofthe districts, it would give kids the opportunity to work with each othet — and to have the best of the But opponents contend that mergers bringh more bureaucracy, longer bus rides for student s and diminution of locao pride.
“In this community, the worldd revolves around this school,” says Thomas superintendent ofthe 478-pupil Sherman Central School District in Chautauquas County. “If the school went away, Sherman, N.Y., wouled lose a great deal of its School consolidation has beena volatile, emotional issu e for a century. The state was crosshatched by 10,564 districts in 1910, many of them centerecd on one-room schoolhouses. A push for greated efficiency reduced that numberto 6,400 by the outbreaok of World War II, then swiftl y down to 1,300 by 1960.
New York now has 698 Statewide enrollment works outto 2,540 pupils per district, whichu falls 25 percent below the national average of 3,400, according to the State Commission on Property Tax The gap is even larger in Wester n New York, which had 104 districtsx when Business First began ratingh schools in 1992. Mergers have since reducefd that number to 98 school They educate an averageof 2,268 students, 33 percentr below the U.S. norm. A comprehensive effort to push regionap enrollment up to the national average would require the eliminationh of 33 Western NewYork districts.
That process woule be complicated, messy, rancorous — and extremely There is no shortage of candidates for tobe sure. Busineszs First easily came up with 13hypotheticakl mergers, most of them baser on standards proposed in last December’ss report. These unions would involve districts from alleight counties. for a summary of these 13 potential consolidations. It should be stressedx that this list is not reality. State officials lack the power to force districtsto consolidate.
Initiative must be taken at thelocapl level, which happens Only one prospective merger in Westerj New York has currentlh reached an advanced stage of Brocton and Fredonia began consolidation talks last year, eventually commissioning a feasibility study at the beginnin of winter. If they decide later this year that a mergermakes sense, voters in both districts would be givenj their say in a referendum.

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