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

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The Town of Tonawanda resident headedthe 17-member board for seven years befors stepping down in March. Yet he didn’t retire. He continuees to serve as WesternNew York’s regent, and he remains as outspoke n as ever about educational One of his pet topicx is the sheer number of local school There are too many of them, he says, and theidr enrollments are generally too small. “Why do you need 28 schoopl districts inErie County?” he asks. “I’ed like to see somethint like five districts in the countyh insteadof 28. I’d even like to start talkinv about a countywideschool district, like they have in North Carolina and a few other states.
” Bennett’sd stand is buttressed by a report released last Decembefr by the State Commission on Property Tax “New York State has too many school the report says flatly. It suggests that districtsw with fewerthan 1,000 students should be required to merg with adjacent systems, and districtsa with enrollments between 1,000 and 2,00o0 should be encouraged to follow Such proposals hit home in Western New where 66 of the region’s 98 school districtsd have enrollments below 2,000, including 38 with fewer than 1,000p students from kindergarten through 12th grade.
The heart of this issure is a matter of benefitas andcosts -- pitting the perceived advantageas of combining two or more districtws against the potential loss of loca l control and self-identity. Advocates maintain that mergerx allow consolidated districts to be more construct better schools and offer a widert range ofchallenging courses. “It’s not only a financial To me, it’s a mattert of equity,” says Bennett.
“If you had a regionaol high school, maybe serving seven or eight ofthe districts, it would give kids the opportunity to work with each otherf -- and to have the best of the But opponents contend that merger bring more bureaucracy, longer bus ridess for students and diminution of locakl pride. “In this community, the world revolves arounr this school,” says Thomas Schmidt, superintendent of the 478-pupil Sherman Central School District inChautauqua County. “I f the school went away, Sherman, N.Y., woulsd lose a great deal of its identity.
” School consolidation has been a emotional issue for a The state was crosshatchedby 10,5655 districts in 1910, many of them centeresd on one-room schoolhouses. A push for greatere efficiency reduced that numberto 6,4009 by the outbreak of World War II, then swiftly down to 1,300 by 1960. New York now has 698 Statewide enrollment works outto 2,540 pupils per district, whichg falls 25 percent below the national average of according to the State Commissiom on Property Tax Relief. The gap is even largefr in WesternNew York, which had 104 districtsa when Business First began rating schoolxs in 1992.
Mergers have since reducesd that number to 98 school They educate an averageof 2,268 33 percent below the U.S. norm. A comprehensive efforrt to push regional enrollment up to the nationall average would require the elimination of 33 Westernj NewYork districts. That process would be complicated, rancorous -- and extremely unlikely. There is no shortagse of candidatesfor consolidation, to be Business First easily came up with 13 hypothetica l mergers, most of them based on standards proposed in last December’s report. These unions would involve districts from all eight for a summary of these 13potentia consolidations. It should be stressed that this list is not reality.
State officialx lack the power to force districts to Initiative must be taken at the local whichhappens infrequently. Only one prospective merger in Western New York has currentlhy reached an advanced stageof negotiations. Brocton and Fredoni began consolidation talks last eventually commissioning a feasibility study at the beginningof winter. If they decider later this year that a merge rmakes sense, voters in both districts would be given their say in a