On The Road to Closing

The BCCT addresses the idea of closing today.

District must navigate code for closing

By JO CIAVAGLIA
Bucks County Courier Times

Unless Morrisville School District submits a plan, the state Department of Education can't definitively say if the district can close its only high school and send its students elsewhere.

Pennsylvania school code is so complicated it's impossible to speculate if the district meets state school closure criteria, what would happen to its students or if neighboring district high schools could be forced to accept them, education department spokesman Michael Race said.

Last week it was revealed that some members of the new Morrisville school board majority have contacted local school systems to see if they'd be interested in accepting its high school students on a tuition basis. For years, the 1,000-student district has been plagued with financial and academic problems.

Charles Herring, an attorney for the state education association and Morrisville teachers union, said this week the union would oppose any attempt to tuition out students.

He added that state precedent exists, which he believes prevents a school board from closing a school and furloughing employees covered under existing union contracts.

Before any district can proceed with a school closing, a plan must be submitted and state-required steps followed, including holding a public hearing to discuss the possible closure at least three months before action is taken. It's unclear what additional requirements apply to school closings that would involve educating students out of a district.

In Pennsylvania, over the last 23 years, at least three school districts — Midland and Duquesne outside Pittsburgh and St. Clair Area in Schuylkill County — have closed high schools and transferred students into neighboring district schools. Each district's set of circumstances and tuition arrangements is so unique to that district that none can be used as a comparison with Morrisville, Race said.

“The particulars of any school closure vary, so it's impossible to speculate on the particulars of Morrisville unless or until the district would outline a closure plan,” Race said. “There are so many areas of the code that could affect this it is difficult to get into a what-if situation.”

Parts of the state school code suggest if a district doesn't have a school, its students would attend the nearest and most convenient school district, Race said. The code does not address what would happen if a district has no room in its school or a policy limiting or barring tuition students.

Take the Midland Borough School District, which closed its high school in 1985. Initially it transferred students to a nearby district's high school, but when the district abruptly ended the agreement — and other districts refused to accept the students — Midland was forced to send the students across state lines.

The district is now the only one in Pennsylvania that sends its students to a high school in East Liverpool, Ohio.

Pennsbury School District, which borders Morrisville, has a board policy that narrowly defines which tuition students can attend the district, district CEO Paul Long said. But that policy doesn't address the potential situation in Morrisville.

“If we got to the point of facing that question with Morrisville, it would be aside from that policy,” Long said.

Neither Bristol Township nor Neshaminy, nearby school districts with underused schools, has a written board policy defining tuition students it will accept into the district.

The state school code also dictates a specific process for closing a school, and there is a general criteria that must be met — such as dwindling student population, poor building condition or shrinking tax base — but each school closure has individual circumstances that must be considered, Race said.

St. Clair Area School District closed its high school in 1990 after experiencing teacher contract problems and falling student enrollment, a district official said. The students now attend nearby Pottsville High School, though the closing resulted in years of legal battles with its teachers union.

A state-appointed board decided to close Duquesne City School District's high school in June, seven years after the 775-student district was named to a state list of 12 financially and academically distressed districts.

Specific state legislation was added to the school code to dictate some of the particulars of the Duquesne closure, including giving state Education Secretary Gerald Zahorchak the authority to reassign nearly 200 high school students to nearby school districts, over those districts' objections.

Starting this school year, Duquesne high school students attend West Mifflin Area or East Allegheny School Districts. The district continues to educate its K-8 students. West Mifflin Area and East Allegheny have filed a joint lawsuit seeking to overturn Zahorchak's decision.

The state code also doesn't spell out what the per-student tuition rate for sending school districts would be, Race said.

Applying the charter school funding principle, the money follows the student, meaning whatever the sending district receives in state funding is what the charter school receives. But per-student costs vary by district and it's unclear if a sending or accepting district's rate applies — and which district would make up any cost difference.

The school code dictates that terms of “tuition out” students can be determined by the districts, so the cost of reimbursement for the students could be negotiated between the sending and accepting districts, Race said.

Montgomery County's Bryn Athyn School District, the state's lone paper-only district, sends all its public school students to neighboring Lower Moreland School District.

The district operates no public school buildings. Most children attend the Academy of the New Church, a private school operated by the Swedenborgian church, whose world headquarters is Bryn Athyn.

This year there are eight Bryn Athyn students attending Lower Moreland schools, Lower Moreland business manager Mark McGuinn said.

Bryn Athyn pays the state-certified Lower Moreland tuition rate of $9,297 for elementary students and $10,833 for secondary students. There is a separate hourly rate for services for special education students, he added.

Lower Moreland also has a board policy specifying the only tuition students it accepts are from Bryn Athyn.

Did you know...

As of the 2006-07 school year, Pennsylvania had 65 school districts with 1,000 or fewer students.

Of the 501 school districts in the state, 39 percent have fewer than 3,000 students.

Staff writers Rachel Canelli and Joan Hellyer contributed to this story.
Jo Ciavaglia can be reached at 215 949-4181 or jciavaglia@phillyBurbs.com.