Is consolidation a solution for struggling rural systems? Would it kill community and football?
One of our regular posters raised an interesting point during the debate over the charter school planned for Southwest Georgia. The poster noted that the five affected districts have fewer than 5,000 students total. If they were s0 worried about losing funding to a charter school, why not consider the obvious way to save money — consolidate?
Is high school football the tie that bonds rural communities and is it a contributing factor to the resistance to the consolidation of smaller districts?
Good question. Why not?
Here is what the poster wrote:
If this isn’t a case for consolidation of small counties, I don’t know what is….
These are among the smallest counties in Georgia. The five of them combined have fewer than 5000 students. Compare this to Gwinnett, with about 160,000 students, Cobb with about 108,000, or DeKalb with just under 100,000.
Yet, because they do not have economies of scale and have some of the same fixed costs as larger counties, their per-pupil costs are among the highest in the state. Three of them are in the top 10 for per-pupil spending, and all are in the top 25 – and its a sure bet they don’t have near the tax base of the metro counties.
This is pathetic. I bet none of the local school boards or superintendents would want to consolidate and give up their pitiful little power bases for the good of the children, but where is the gubernatorial or state school superintendent candidate who might make this a platform? It would be a terribly unpopular platform in many areas, but in many ways it’s the only practical solution to reduce Georgia’s governmental bloat.
A few years ago, I looked into consolidation and was told that it would never happen because small systems would not surrender their sportsl teams. I was also told that the schools and teams provided a community bond in counties that have little else binding their citizens. I think that is a real concern, but wonder why the communities couldn’t coalesce around a regional high school football team? Are the rivalries that deep that they could not be overcome?
Legitimate questions also can be raised about the savings from consolidating small districts into larger ones: A 2005 report by the National Rural Education Association concluded that the educational and financial results of district consolidations seldom produce either the savings or the academic improvements sought.
In a 2004 report, the Goldwater Institute in Phoenix, Ariz., studied the issue in response to the possibility of united small districts in Arizona. It stated:
In November 2002, the Arizona Office of the Auditor General (OAG) released a report on school districts’ administrative spending that found, on average, small school districts spent more per pupil than large districts. In response, the Arizona State Legislature established a commission to study the potential savings from statewide school district consolidation.
A closer examination of the OAG report suggests statewide school district consolidation is unlikely to produce the hoped-for fiscal savings. Moreover, empirical research shows consolidation increases administrative costs at the expense of classroom instruction, yielding larger classes, fewer teachers, and lower student achievement. Therefore, consolidation is a marginal reform, best implemented on a limited, case-by-case basis.
The Goldwater report also addresses in depth the psychic toll to rural communities from consolidation:
Emil J. Haller and David H. Monk, professors of education administration at Cornell University, studied rural school district consolidation from the 1940s to the 1970s and concluded that “consolidation was “profoundly undemocratic.” Focusing his research on rural school districts, Paul Nachtigall explains why: “Seeking economies of scale through school consolidation are, at best, elusive,” and at worst, he continues, “to the extent that closing schools [as a result of district consolidation] contributes to the demise of rural communities, the dollars saved are a high price to pay for the loss of those communities.”
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20 comments Add your comment
Northern Visitor
February 9th, 2010
11:54 am
“One of our sharpest posters – ScienceTeacher671…”
???
Only in Georgia
Bill
February 9th, 2010
12:01 pm
ScienceTeacher671 needs to do a little more research. Do you remember Mitchell-Baker HS, Stewart-Quitman HS, TriCounty HS (Marion, Schley, Webster Counties). These schools were created when Jimmy Carter was governor, and he thought it might be successful. ScienceTeacher671, look up test results of these original schools and compare them to present test scores, courses offered then & now, and reasons why these school systems has recently gone their own way. Then report back with your results.
Bill
February 9th, 2010
12:10 pm
Baker & Quitman Counties have no football teams. Webster County has a JV football team with no varsity team. Again, ScienceTeacher671 do some research on Southwest Georgia school systems before solving our problems in the other part of the state.
irisheyes
February 9th, 2010
12:17 pm
“Baker & Quitman Counties have no football teams. Webster County has a JV football team with no varsity team. Again, ScienceTeacher671 do some research on Southwest Georgia school systems before solving our problems in the other part of the state.”
@Bill, basic reading comprehension would tell you that ScienceTeacher671 never mentioned football, Maureen did. ST671 looked at per pupil spending and size of the student body in proportion to the larger counties in the metro area.
Bill
February 9th, 2010
12:22 pm
Also, there ia Randolph Clay HS ScienceTeacher671. Make sure you do some research on them as well. So, you can see there was consolidation of school systems.
Maureen Downey
February 9th, 2010
12:23 pm
To all,
I have to second irisheyes. I brought up football because I attended a hearing years ago on consolidation – it was statewide, not focusing on southwest Georgia – and the repeated comment there was that rural towns would not want to lose their sports teams.
But I also think the other points that I brought up – the sense of community around schools and whether larger means better – also need to be considered. They, too, were discussed at the hearing. And I have talked to rural education experts in the past where they stressed the community identity tied to their schools.
So that the comments aren’t directed to the wrong person, I just changed the entry a bit.
Maureen
Bill
February 9th, 2010
12:38 pm
Maureen
Come to south Georgia, talk to all people that will be affected. Hearings, conferences, and research papers are not the final solutions. I am a retired south Georgia educator that have been to hearings & conferences. I have done research papers out the wazoo. Heard the same stuff as well. Come to south Georgia and do your own research on the systems affected. Come back, and then tell us what you found out.
Maureen Downey
February 9th, 2010
12:39 pm
Bill, What would the systems lose from consolidation? Maureen
what's right for kids???
February 9th, 2010
12:58 pm
Communities want their community school. There is no loyalty to a consolidated school. There are articles all over the place about schools that were consolidated and how their test scores went down!
Do a quick google search. Consolidation is not the answer for student achievement.
http://www.buckeyeinstitute.org/article/327 is a quick example.
Clarence
February 9th, 2010
1:02 pm
Even if they keep all the schools and principals, there are still efficiencies that could be realized by consolidating Boards and back offices…
Lee
February 9th, 2010
2:12 pm
To expand on what Clarence said, I think the real benefit / cost savings of consolidation would be in the service organization functions. Accounting, payroll, procurement, facilities management, transportation/fleet management, construction, and human resources are just a few.
You could probably set up 6-8 regions across the state for the rural areas. The metro school systems are probably large enough to sustain their own individual departments in these areas.
Wounded Warrior
February 9th, 2010
2:21 pm
Leave the communities alone. People buy homes so that they can send their kids to a certain school system. Let the locals do their way…don’t interfere in their lives. Government has done anything that was profitable yet.
Wounded Warrior
February 9th, 2010
2:22 pm
gov’t hasn’t done anything that is profitable…
catlady
February 9th, 2010
2:31 pm
On a purely local level, when the elementary schools were consolidated in my county, it dealt a death blow to a number of different parts of “community”. So, in the end, it might have saved money, but it resulted in lost money due to more dropouts, fewer community ties, less community support of the schools, etc.
With the small schools, you had principals teaching classes as well, and those principals were well aware of what was going on with the students. I taught in a small community school (still open, the only one of its kind in the county) and the principal taught a class up until at least 1990. In the large and huge schools we have now, the principal does not know half the kids’ names, and may not even recognize them in the grocery store.
Sometimes you save money by doing the right thing IN THE LONG RUN. I know we have folks whose idea of long-range planning is thinking about next week, and you see the results we get (meltdown of financial markets, pollution of air, water, food, etc.)
Bill
February 9th, 2010
4:16 pm
Maureen- Sorry for not responding sooner-personal business. To answer your latest response,”What would the systems lose from consolidation?” I don’t have a problem with it. However, as I have said previously, many of these schools have or had consolidated their high schools back in the 70s’ & 80s’. School consolidation is not new to those systems. Most with the exception of Randolph Clay have gone back to individual high schools. Why did they go back to individual high schools, I don’t know. I would imagine they got funds to build their own high school. So, again let me say talk with the people personally affected by the consolidation idea as well as a charter school.
By the way Maureen, why hasn’t Fulton County & APS schools consolidated? As well as Marietta City & Cobb County school systems? As well as Gainesville City & Hall County? As you asked me, let me ask you: What would those systems lose to consolidation? If it is good for small school systems to consolidate, why not big ones.
As to irisheyes and their smart remark. I realize Maureen brought up the football question, but ScienceTeacher671 brought up the consolidation idea. It has been tried and failed. I tried to respond to both ScienceTeacher671’s consolidation idea, and Maureen’s idea of football. So Irisheyes, maybe you need to get your eyes checked. I know a good south Georgia eye doctor that could put you in some new eye glasses.
Bill
February 9th, 2010
4:39 pm
Hey Maureen, Why wasn’t my last response put in the blog?
ScienceTeacher671
February 9th, 2010
7:41 pm
Bill, even if the counties consolidated their high schools, each county still had its own school board, its own school superintendent, and apparently its own elementary schools — which is probably one of the reasons the “consolidation” experiment failed to begin with.
It’s the elimination of 5 different school boards and superintendents, as well as the consolidation of 5 separate sheriff’s departments, tax collectors, county commissions, etc. that I believe would save counties quite a bit of money.
And, according to the DOE website, last year Clay County had 290 students, Baker 406, Calhoun 632, Randolph 1240, and Early 2277. I doubt the smaller three have enough students to field a football team.
I agree with Catlady that small community elementary schools are best.
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ScienceTeacher671
February 9th, 2010
9:15 pm
And you’re all welcome to disagree – hopefully with facts and evidence – but it seems to me that there would be nothing to lose, and a lot of cost savings to gain, by going back to something like the 1850 county boundaries in Georgia (with the exception perhaps of Irwin County, which was very large back then.)
Most states our size have less than half the counties we do – and I’m personally within an hour’s drive of at least 10 county courthouses; I’d bet most of you are, too. We wouldn’t necessarily have to have large schools, but there is a lot of duplication of services across our state which is frankly unnecessary. You see the same sort of thing, multiplied, in South Carolina’s “corridor of shame” where some counties have 3, 4, or 5 different school districts – all the money goes to administration, and none ends up with the children.
Warrior Woman
February 10th, 2010
11:36 am
ScienceTeacher671 is right about the possibilities of reducing costs by consolidating back office functions. Consolidation might also help in drawing more rational attendance zones – I grew up in a rural area where folks living less than a mile from my elementary school were bussed 15 miles the other direction to school because of living across the county line.
On the other hand, consolidation has a cost. Community schools are important to a sense of “connectedness” to the community. Sports loyalty builds, and is part of, that connection, but isn’t all of it. Local control is also important to school success. School size and travel time also influence outcomes. Any decision to consolidate needs to consider these things as well.
Maybe there’s a middle way, where school systems share some functions and expenses.