It is troubling that Gov. Ed Rendell's budget-related proposal to reduce the number of school districts from 500 to fewer than 100 came as a surprise to educators.
Local administrators described it as a "bolt from the blue," and one local superintendent said he was "shocked and awed" by the scope of the proposal, for which the governor, apparently with little or no comment from educators, is now seeking taxpayer funding for a commission to study and plan the consolidations.
Interviewed this week, several local school district administrators questioned whether school consolidations would actually save money and raised concerns about how the changes would affect educational programs and family involvement in the schools. Some of those same questions were addressed in a 2001 study by the Center for Policy Research, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.
Researchers at Syracuse studied the impacts of consolidation in rural school districts in New York state from 1985 to 1997 and found operating cost savings of around 20 percent in the consolidation of two 300-pupil school districts, savings of 7 to 9 percent in the consolidation of two 900-pupil school districts and "little, if any, impact on the costs of two 1,500-pupil districts."
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