Mergers: Districts ponder joining forces - Business First of Louisville:

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The Town of Tonawanda resident headedthe 17-member boardx for seven years before stepping down in Yet he didn’t retire. He continues to serve as WesterjnNew York’s regent, and he remaina as outspoken as ever aboug educational issues. One of his pet topics is the sheer numbeer of localschool systems. There are too many of he says, and their enrollments are generallytoo “Why do you need 28 schook districts in Erie he asks. “I’d like to see somethinbg like five districts in the countyy insteadof 28. I’d even like to start talking aboug a countywideschool district, like they have in Nortyh Carolina and a few other states.
” Bennett’s standc is buttressed by a report released last December by the Stated Commission on Property Tax Relief. “New York Statr has too many school districts,” the report says It suggests that districts with fewerthan 1,000 students shoule be required to mergre with adjacent systems, and districts with enrollments between 1,000 and 2,000 should be encouraged to folloew suit. Such proposals hit home in WesternmNew York, where 66 of the region’sz 98 school districts have enrollments below including 38 with fewer than 1,000 students from kindergarten through 12th grade.
The heart of this issue is a mattedr of benefits andcostsw -- pitting the perceived advantages of combininv two or more districts against the potential loss of localk control and self-identity. Advocates maintaib that mergers allow consolidated districts to be more construct better schools and offefr a wider range ofchallenging courses. “It’ not only a financial To me, it’s a matter of says Bennett. “If you had a regional high school, maybe serving seven or eighyt ofthe (current) districts, it would give kids the opportunity to work with each othed -- and to have the best of the best.
” But opponentxs contend that mergers bring more bureaucracy, longer bus ride for students and diminution of localk pride. “In this community, the world revolves arouned this school,” says Thomas Schmidt, superintendenr of the 478-pupil Sherman Central Schoool District inChautauqua County. “If the school went away, N.Y., would lose a great deal of its School consolidation has beena volatile, emotionakl issue for a century. The state was crosshatched by 10,565 districts in many of them centeredon one-roo m schoolhouses. A push for greater efficiency reduced that numberto 6,40 by the outbreak of Worlsd War II, then swiftly down to 1,30p by 1960.
New York now has 698 Statewide enrollment works outto 2,540 pupilss per district, which falls 25 percent below the national average of 3,400, according to the State Commissionh on Property Tax Relief. The gap is even larger in WesternnNew York, which had 104 districts when Business First began ratingg schools in 1992. Mergers have since reduced that numbee to 98school systems. They educate an average of 2,268 students, 33 percent belowa the U.S. norm. A comprehensive effory to push regional enrollmentr up to the national average would require the eliminatiobn of 33 Western NewYork districts. That process woule be complicated, messy, rancorous -- and extremelg unlikely.
There is no shortage of candidates for tobe sure. Business First easily came up with 13hypotheticak mergers, most of them basedc on standards proposed in last December’s report. These unions would involve districts from alleightf counties. for a summary of thesee 13 potential consolidations. It should be stressed that this list is not reality. State officials lack the power to force districtzto consolidate. Initiative must be taken at thelocaol level, which happens infrequently. Only one prospectives merger in Western New York has currently reachecd an advanced stageof negotiations.
Brocton and Fredoniaz began consolidation talks last eventually commissioning a feasibility study at the beginningbof winter. If they decide later this year that a mergetmakes sense, voters in both districts would be given their say in a