Yes, 10 kids can make one school district
| Saturday, Mar 28 2009 11:19 PM
Last Updated Monday, Mar 30 2009 04:21 PM
It's been a tough year for everything associated with state funding, from road construction projects to programs for homebound seniors. At the top of that list, of course, is public education, which is taking an $11 billion hit.
Required cuts have forced each of California's 1,050 school districts to look hard at priorities. Some belt tightening has undoubtedly been healthy, but many of the cuts have drawn blood.
Jobs have been lost, classes axed, but through all the tumult each of those 1,050 school districts has stayed put. Well, of course they have, you might be thinking. Where would they go? Nevada?
Answer: Some might have folded into themselves. Merged. Eliminated redundancy in administration, transportation, food service and other services.
Almost no county qualifies more emphatically for district consolidation than Kern County. Despite having only 175,000 students, Kern County has 47 school districts, third-most in the state behind only Los Angeles County (with 1.6 million students and 92 K-12 districts -- understandable) and Tulare (with 95,000 students and 48 districts -- baffling).
Twenty-one of Kern County's school districts are tiny, containing just one or two schools -- including one district with a mere 10 students. Ten! Why not combine services with other small districts and use the money saved to -- I don't know -- buy new books? fund a science club? start an emergency fund so students don't suffer in the next meltdown? Why not join forces with three or four small, rural districts in the same general vicinity that have similar demographics and similar educational priorities?
"Because parents just didn't want to do it," said Greg Coker, superintendent of the 75-student Midway School District, based in that tiny, verge-of-a-ghost-town known as Fellows. Coker was a teacher at Midway a decade or so ago, when the Midway and McKittrick school districts considered a merger but ultimately rejected the idea. "A merger would probably save costs," Coker said, "but I don't think it would it be good for students."
Maybe it wouldn't. But maybe it would: That was the conclusion of a 2005 study by researchers at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Their comparison of big and small rural districts in Pennsylvania found higher standardized test scores in larger districts, especially at the high school level, and other more positive measureables.
I'm not the only one who wonders if a sharing of expenses and resources might benefit tiny rural school districts. The Indiana House is considering the possibility of merging school districts with fewer than 500 students as part of a bill containing other proposals. And in Washington state, Gov. Chris Gregoire, motivated by the state's $6 billion budget deficit, is calling for consolidation of small public school districts. "I don't get why we have 50 (school districts) that have less than 150 students," she said last month.
The Sonoma County Grand Jury studied the issue in 2002, declaring that county's 40 independent school districts (fifth-most in the state) excessive given the number of the students there (today, about 72,000). "On average, multi-school districts perform better academically and cost less for administration than do single-school districts," the Grand Jury reported. The idea went nowhere.
There's no question small school districts possess a certain charm. There's a sense that parents are more in control of their children's education when fewer layers of authority are in the way, and there may be some truth to that. But small schools will remain small schools; the character of the rural classroom isn't likely to change just because the two little schools that lie just across the river have come aboard. State and federal guidelines have taken away some flexibility in curriculum anyway -- not entirely bad if you remember the odd direction that the superintendent of the tiny Belridge School District tried to take his students back in 1999. Those tiny fiefdoms should be willing to make a few sacrifices along with huge, citified school districts.
Reach Robert Price at rprice@bakersfield.com or www.stubblebuzz.com.
