EdVANTAGE Blog

Yesterday’s Buffalo News reported on a legislative proposal to institute a “Berger commission” on education.

The reference is to a past New York State commission chaired by veteran public servant Stephen Berger which was empowered to recommend closures, mergers and other reconfigurations of hospitals and other health service agencies.

As the News explains, “Like the Berger Commission’s recommendations, the school panel’s plan would become binding across the state unless the Legislature votes the entire package down.”

I won’t critique the specifics of the proposal now, but I will offer some general reflections on school district consolidation.

First, as I have written previously, in many parts of upstate New York, superintendents are ardent proponents of consolidation.  See here and here.

Typically these superintendents support consolidation, not because it might save money (often it does not, at least initially), but because they see it as essential to preserving the capacity to give their communities’ schoolchildren a comprehensive education in the face of steep and steady enrollment declines.

At the same time, there are concerns that closure of school buildings could accelerate the decline of some small rural communities.

Also, hard and fast rules such as those proposed by the Suozzi Commission on property tax relief (merge all districts with fewer than 1,000 students) are unworkable.  In some merger targets, geographic boundaries would inflict students with unreasonably long daily bus rides to and from school.

So consolidation of administrative functions, development of regional high schools, and reliance on on-line distance learning need to be part of a menu of strategies, along with actual school district mergers.

Second, drawing an analogy between hospitals and school districts is imperfect.  I’ll use personal experience to explain why.

When I graduated from high school in Niagara Falls in 1974, the city was served by two hospitals and six high schools – three public, two Catholic, and one private independent.

Today there are still two hospitals – the Berger Commission recommended they adopt a unified governance structure but accepted their decision to instead collaborate without formal affiliation.  But now there is only one public high school and one Catholic high school.

So at the level of service providing entities (school buildings) there has been overlooked consolidation that is analogous to what was sought with hospitals.

There has also been more of this consolidation within school districts in the wake of state aid cuts over the past year.  Five percent of superintendents responding to a Council-School Boards Association survey last February said their districts were considering closing school buildings and the rate was  higher among larger districts.

There are still arguments for school district mergers, but they are not necessarily the same ones that animated efforts to consolidate hospitals.

I will write more about school district consolidation in a future post.  Our national affiliate, the American Association of School Administrators devoted the May edition of its monthly magazine to the topic.

The edition includes articles by retired North Colonie superintendent Randi Ehrenberg and Syracuse University professors John Yinger and William Duncombe.

The legislative proposal which provoked this post has actually been around for awhile.  It was first introduced by Assemblyman Kevin Cahill (D-Ulster), back in January.