School consolidation

The local school districts are investigating the feasibility of consolidating schools. there are several outlying issues that raise concerns.
1 the larger school district has just built a new high school, gymnasium, Etc, they have a bond and the taxes are higher. The way I heard it explained was that if the school boards agree ahead of time this bond can be transferred to the property owners in the merging district, if no agreement then no change in taxes.
2 The larger district has k-3 elementary school in the next town east(about 13 miles). The town considering merging is west of the larger town about 10 miles, and their district extends west another 10 miles. Essentially any K-3 child would have a 30 mile drive to and from school each way.
3 There already exists a longstanding distrust between the two towns from who knows how long ago(kinda like in the middle east but without all the killings). but at the same time many parents have transferred their kids to the larger school in the past year, in many cases so they will be in a better sports
program/larger classes.
I really don't have a lot at stake. My kids started school in the smaller school, we moved to a bigger house in the bigger school district but kept the kids in the first school since we live right on the boundary. That being said I pay the high taxes but don't get anything from them.
What are some of your experiences with this kind of thing? Nobody wants to lose the largest employer in town, but it is probably going to happen.

Do you live in back yard? LOL been fighting school-intertown battles here for 50 years. Took on another school district in 90. The kids got along fine but a lot of bitter, hateful parents have made it h3ll for one another. Combine it all with open enrollment and it's been difficult at times.

Unfortunately it is a sign of the times,a dwindling rural population,farms growing larger,small town industry fading..same problem in southern Ontario,too many rural schools with to low a student count..and these rural schools were all built around 1964-1970,so they are at their end as a public building,they need more repairs,they are harder to heat and simply don't meet today's standards,the small towns don't want to lose their school,yet economically they can't afford them,if they were to be kept their school taxes would be unaffordable,plain and simple. Here we have closed four schools around me,moved all grade 7 and 8 to the high school,and utilized the biggest school buildings for the present,but plan to build a new "super School" at one of the old locations that will serve what four central schools used to serve.I understand that no one wants to lose their school.there is a sense of community and an attachment,yet we have to let go of them..we once thought the same thing when our one room schools were closed.

Greg, i attended large schools in NJ until I was a junior in high school. When we moved to a small rural area in 71 I had finished algebra I&II, biology I&II and Spanish I&II. Because of state requirements in my junior and senior years I took no language class, general science 1&II, accounting and book keeping. I had the same history book as a senior for US history that I had in 8th grade in NJ. Larger schools can have an advantage in more than just a sports program. The larger schools have enough students to justify a better selection of studies and programs. The down side is they can also have more problems too.

I'd like to see the schols here consolidate just for the sake of the kids.

Rick

It started here back in the 60's. Mostly built on lies. It will be so efficient! The "state" will pay so much of it we can't afford not to do it! The old school buildings are safety hazards. We can't afford to fix them. etc. etc.
The last of the three original buildings was just closed, after a public vote NOT to close it!!! All three original buildings are still standing. In the meanwhile, the poorly constructed "new" school has required much serious work.
We have lost control.

Like what was mentioned, it's a sign of the times. We went through that twenty years ago. Two schools that had been viscious rivals for generations merged. A couple of years later this new merger, merged with another district that involved two districs that had merged years before that. So now we have had four towns involved in one district that's forty miles long by maybe twenty miles wide. They started out with high school in one building, middle school in another and grades 1-6 in the other two buildings. Then about 12 years ago or so this new district build a new K-12 building in the country by one of the towns. Taxes went up and people grumbled but this new building is far more efficient than maintaining the four old brick three story behemoths with the huge single pane windows and there's no more shuttling kids between school buildings. A couple of years ago, a fifth district, which is a consolidation of two districts started shipping their high school students to this new school under a shared agreement. So now, this new school building has high school students from six former districts and middle and grade school students from four former districts. (whew) A lot of fuel is burned up every day in transportation, but we just don't have the population we used to. One benefit we do have transportation-wise is we're on pretty much flat land with good straight well maintained roads so the buses spend a minimal amount of time on the road. Jim

A larger school district can offer a wider selection of courses and opportunities.

We kept our K-6 here and send our 7-12 to a larger district. More opertunities in the larger school, but nice to keep our young ones in town.

Belgrave, Blyth, Brussels and Wingham by chance? Lots of Rural kids around but the old order Menonites and Amish don"t mix with the English unless there is $$$ to be made. Same problem finding enough kids to even have sports teams.

Higher taxes, easier access to drugs more behavior problems, higher pay for Superintendent , more principals what more could you ask for? That's what we have here.

Yeah there will always be those who love/hate the outcome, and you can always find arguments for/against anything. I really do not have a dog in the hunt so to speak since I already pay the high taxes. My biggest concern is with my oldest boy who is autistic, which is why we kept him in the regular environment when we moved. Typically children with autism do better in familiar environments, also when children with disabilities are around children they grew up with they are accepted better and the other children help them as opposed to picking on the "different" kid. My two younger boys are "normal"(if you can call the two monkeys that!)and will do fine wherever they are at, we just need to do what is best for the challenged one. Recently there has been a trend to get rid of the "underachievers" and try to get them to try another school so the scores are higher and I don't want my kid in that category. The school he is at has done a wonderful job with him, but from talks with parents in the other school district they are usually less than impressed with the special ed dept. of the other school. I am sure some are happy with it I just have not talked to them.
There has been talk of keeping the k-6 in the small school and combine high schools and sports like has been mentioned previously.
Thanks for the input from everyone and keep em coming!

if this country would stop consolidating and incorporating everything that comes down the pike, then maybe someday, laying the blame for this countries problems on welfare, handouts, entitlements, laziness, stupidity, whatever, will cease.

Talk about a source of aggrevation!

Local school industry absolutely HAD to upgrade the schools or the World would stop spinning.

The middle school is an attractive brick and stone building in excellent repair.

The 'upgrade' consisted of a obvious add-on with completely different style and windows. A feature of this boondoggle is a hallway with stone clad 'bumpouts' that take up a third of the hallway with no function.

Another aggrevation is with this school and another the parking lots were torn up. The 'landscaped' version with grass, trees and plants probably looked cool to someone. Unfortunately the upgraded lot for the middle school holds a third less cars.

The 'cool' parking lot seems a lot less attractive when you are struggling to walk through slush, ice and snow for a quarter mile to attend a play or show because the parking lot is full.

End of rant.

Brad

State forced consolidation of a couple three community schools here back in '68. Think the two and a half communities are still at war. Even though they built two buildings in the middle, and finally due to flagging enrollment closed three schools in the outlying communities. Everyone bussed to central campus.
Ain't nobody happy!

There's real no easy answer. So much depends on the communities involved. When our communities were forced into consolidation by the state in the 60's it was pretty ugly. My older siblings had to endure many hardships that I won't go into detail about. I was 8yrs younger and things were improving. By the time my nephews started school conditions were much approved. Now you'd never know there were problems, but it took time. I knew as a kid, we didn't really belong, but were tolerated. It usually drove the kids from my community to excel to prove we belonged. I still chuckle when I return and see the Wall of Fame at the high school. Most of the names are from my community. I have no hard feelings, it's just the way things were. There's advantages to consolidation but also disadvantages. This is where you hope you are represented by strong school boards that are willing to work together. I always chuckle over people complaining about supporting school districts. Nobody likes paying taxes, but remember, someone helped to pay for your education. Our youth are our future.

The massive waste is disgusting. In my district they put up a new elem. school. But.....enrollment is declining .....HUH?

I'll bet many of the kids would still rather home school using on-line system. My kids wanted to ,but we were not to keen on it so they keep going to school. Youngest is just a few months from graduation !!!! I keep telling her you think it's bad now ,just wait until you get out into the real world.

I can tell you from personal experience that everyone will throw a huge fuss and try and fight it but the way it is(here in PA) they big shots in Harrisburg want fewer schools in fewer districts. They shut our school down 2 years after after I graduated. They left our elementary school open. We had 2 high schools, one middle school and 2 elementary. The district had been split right down the center and we have the second largest district in our county. 9th in the state. Now the high schoolers have almost an hour ride one way in the morning at the farthest end. They could have closed the middle school in the other end of the district but they have a bunch of rich people that didn't want that. We were the smaller end so we got the shaft... There was also a huge issue of mineral rights but thats another story.

What follows consolidation? Usually a new gym!

I know of a location where they consolidated all of the schools in the county into one big district, then issued bonds to build a big new gym - and then discovered that almost all of the farmers were old - and that there would only be 1 student in the county entering kindergarten the next year. Of course, the new gym still has to be paid off whether the school operates or not.

I hate it for you. They closed our local schools and sent everyone to the "Big School" in town. Now you all can say what you want to but I'm about to tell you the truth. The whole thing was about black and white. There were a few whites and blacks in each school but the majority of the white kids all went to the two country schools. Black kids all went to the Big School in town. The grade average in town was atrocious but out in the rural schools it was real high. But the discipline problems in the Big School were the real problem. So the answer was to consolidate and that would bring up the grade averages, plus dilute the discipline problem. Didn't work! Now we have two private schools that are overflowing and we have the local law enforcement at the Big School practically every week.

they did a state mandated consolidation in oregon a few years ago. In our area there were several small independant grade school districts (k-6). and the highschool district (7-12). The gradeschool districts were well run and fiscally responsible. If they came to the voters for money for a new bus, they got it because the taxpayers new it was legit. The highschool district was always short on cash, because they spent it on useless things that weren't really needed. With the consolidation the highschool district was in the driver seat. It has been going down hill ever since.
Tim in OR

I keep seeing people talking about sports teams. Sports have NOTHING to do with education. Same for all the other feel good stuff. It's supposed to be about education, not entertainment.

Many of the schools in my county merged districts back in the 60s and 70s. Lots of them are named "xx Union" such as Fairfield Union, Liberty Union, etc. Made sense since each was dying on its own. One new thing being tried is not merging the actual districts but using common admins over several small districts. Jury is still out on that concept overall but I like the cost saving.

Ohio has been on a roll to replace old schools. As I understand it (maybe someone here knows more detail), there is a priority list and when your district floats to the top you have so many years to come up with your share of the funds. In our area they funded the bond issue with part of the school income tax at a rate of 1%. Never thought that was a good idea since the income can vary over time and you may not get enough to pay what's owed. For example, a company in a nearby town in our district is moving that operation to Mexico and about 120 folks are out of a job. So that's 1% of that income that won't be available to the school. We built two new elementary schools (needed), a whole new high school (NOT needed, in my mind) and remodeled a Jr. High (probably needed).

Where I went to school it was a small district and the high school was ancient even in the late 60s (built in 1925). Had to have a new high school, it opened in 1972 and everything was moved out of the old building... going to tear it down, too expensive to fix up, yada, yada. In 2013 IT IS STILL THERE! It's been remodeled to be the school district offices and the new-old high school I went to was long ago torn down, replaced by Georgian style fancy brick buildings. Needless to say, the district has grown a lot in size and wealth. Some of you might have heard of Les Wexner, founder of the Limited and Victoria's Secret, he bought up a lot of the property there in New Albany and created a new very upscale place to live, work and play.

Keeping community schools can be a disaster too.

Here we had 3-4 districts that could have consolidated. When it was first discussed the state would have built and equipped a new central high school and repaired the smaller school in each town for K-8. Each school would open with no debt. The communities refused and raised taxes to keep it from happening. So now 30 years later were have 4 K-12 schools, each with a new building with the cheapest one being about 5 million. 3 of the schools share some sport teams because of declining enrollment. Each district without the funds to properly maintain the new buildings. Plus one school has had to shut down a wing due to declining enrollment.

3 of those schools did things differently. One build an auditorium thinking it would attract "a better quailty of people" and that they could rent it to other schools and to traveling theater groups. Too small so that didn't work out. One built a big gym with thoughts of renting to other schools when those schools hosted tournaments, they have had some success but they went way over budget on the building. The last is the one that had to shut down a wing. These same schools were the biggest rivals too.

Now they share a football team with 2 of the schools involved. Wrestling all three schools, and base ball all 3 schools with each school having to get kids back and forth to practices.

These little schools had for the boys, football, wrestling, basketball, track, baseball and golf......for the girls volley ball, basketball, softball, track and golf. Now I'm not against school sports but someone has to say this is ridiculous. The tax payer can only do so much.

And none of these schools are prime examples of being places that really prepare kids for college.

Rick

Back in the 50"s what was to be the school district I attended started the steps toward consolidation. Previously there were two turn of the century high schools about 15 miles apart that were pretty worn out, and a bunch of 1 or 2 room grade schools scattered around the surrounding area that fed the high schools. The two high schools were bitter rivals, with the one in an incorporated town that was surrounded with large prosperous farms, and the other high school about 15 miles from the town school in a much less prosperous unincorporated neighborhood surrounded by small farms.

With much debate and discussion, it was finally decided that there would be a consolidation of a fairly large area, requiring a number of bus routes, and construction of a new high school in between the two former high schools. The older high schools were then to be used as consolidated grade schools and all of the small schools were closed. Not everyone was pleased with the many compromises. Supposedly a woman from the rich town said in an open meeting, "Why maybe some of our children might actually MARRY some of those chicken farmers!" But eventually enough of the voters decided that the need for a new high school building would work better with lots more taxpayers paying for it, and that a still fairly small high school would be better for economy of scale than the former tiny high schools had been.

The first class at the new high school was in the 1958-1959 school year. I have talked to people who were in that class as seniors. They mostly said that the kids continued to socialize with the people they knew from their former high schools, and really didn"t do much with their former rivals. The sports teams were combined, and were more successful than the former separate schools had been. But mostly, at first, it was two groups in the school that didn"t have much to do with each other. Too many old rivalries and still a bunch of bitter feelings.

Using the former high school building in the rich town for a grade school worked pretty well, as that building was not in that bad shape, and was large enough for the job. The other old high school was not in good shape at all. The upper story had been condemned for use as classrooms because of structural problems. I went to 6th, 7th and 8th grades in that building and we were prohibited from standing closer than 10 feet from the building outside, for fear that a loose brick might fall on someone (I never saw any bricks on the ground). Somehow the school board came up with a war surplus military hospital that was brought in sections to near the old high school, and it was remodeled into an all wood grade school for 1st through 5th grades. It worked OK, but had terrible heating problems. But it was a way to close the tiny, scattered schools and make a consolidated grade school. Lots of kids got to ride a school bus to school. I lived close enough to the grade school, so I got to walk a mile each way, every day. A mile is a long way for a little 3rd grader!

By the time I started high school, tensions between the town and the other area were pretty much over. We had played against the other grade school in sports in junior high, so there was a little rivalry, but nothing like things were 8 years earlier. As a new freshman, I got to know the kids from the other school and for the most part, we got along fine. Most of the kids from the other grade/junior high school came from much wealthier families than those students from the grade school I attended, and sometimes that produced a little tension and bickering. But we were pretty well consolidated and happy to be going to a relatively new, modern school.

The year after I graduated from 8th grade, a celotex ceiling fell in on a class in the old high school building, and it was decided that the building was no longer safe for classroom use at all. For several years, the school district bussed the 6th, 7th and 8th grade students to the old high school building in the rich town, as there was plenty of room for them there. Those students were then mixed with the students that were already there 3 years earlier than previous students had been.

In 1971, the school district built and opened a new consolidated grade school near the then 14 year old high school and closed the former grade schools. A few years later, with increased enrollment, a new junior high was built next to the grade school.

A couple of years ago, the school district went through the process of replacing the 1958 high school on the same site and remodeling the grade school and junior high buildings. Doing all this cost a lot of money and many questioned the need to do what eventually happened. We will pay for it with our taxes for 20 years. Then new and remodeled schools are very nice, and I am glad that the students have a good place to learn. But since I doubt that any of my grandchildren will ever attend the schools, I do resent having to pay the much higher taxes.

In general, it is my opinion that the consolidation of the school district I attended worked fairly well. One of the KEY decisions that helped it work was the one about building the new school(s) between the two former high schools, rather than building near either school. That was a compromise that was easier on feelings on both groups of students and parents.

From a standpoint of economy, I am pretty sure that it cost less to operate 1 high school and 2 grade schools than it did to operate 2 high schools and maybe 10-15 country grade schools. Part of the equation was the school buses, which got more reliable over the years and roads and road maintenance which responded to the school bus route needs. The consolidation allowed the district to offer some courses that had not been available in the much smaller schools.

Was the education better? It is hard to say. My mother had been a teacher in small schools before she was married. She always said that the BEST elementary education came from little schools, if and only if the teacher was a good one. When she was my 4th grade teacher, there were about 35 kids in the class. My mom tried very hard and did well with most of the students, but 35 students is too large a class. But that was during the post-war baby boom, and they only had one teacher and one room for each grade. My year happened to have lots of students. When the grade schools were consolidated in the new building in 1971, it became possible to have multiple classrooms for each grade. I don"t think they are ever over 25 these days and usually they are smaller groups.

My high school experience was OK. It was nice to go to a fairly new, modern school, and it was big enough so that most of the classes I wanted to take were offered. I found that I mostly dated girls that had come from the other grade school, which would have been more or less unthinkable if I had gone there 10 years before.

Losing its high school is a huge loss for a town. In many ways the town loses much of its identity, since much of the social activity and cohesiveness is connected to the school. Losing its grade school is also bad, since I think it is nice for small children to be able to walk to a nearby school. Long bus rides are endurable, but waste a LOT of time.

In my area, there are lots of new homes, but lots of those homes do not house school children. The high school has grown to more than twice as many students as when I went there 40+ years ago. Unfortunately one of the unintended consequences of building a nice new school system is that now we are getting a lot of students that live in other school districts, but "choice" into our school for various reasons. The "choice" students get some state funding, but the property taxes their parents pay do not come to our district. At least the "choice" students have to supply their own transportation.

In areas of declining population, and fewer students, consolidation may be one of the only good solutions for continuing to provide a decent public education for the students that remain. But consolidation is not easy and WILL ruffle some feathers of the people concerned.

I would suggest lots of talking about the various options and problems that concern your area"s situation. Lots of meetings, surveys and work for the school boards and residents of the area need to happen. A lot of planning and compromise will have to occur. Lots of small steps and a few large steps.

And a consolidation may or may not occur. You will not please everyone, no matter what is decided. It is a HUGE, slow process where you try to do the best you can for the most people. Good luck!