From the Inquirer.
Pa. senator pushes bill on school district mergers
The Associated Press Posted on Tue, Apr. 28, 2009
HARRISBURG, Pa. - A western Pennsylvania state senator wants a government commission to study how to consolidate many of Pennsylvania's 500 public school districts.
Cambria County Democrat John Wozniak said Tuesday the state should begin a process he says could take years but result in better academic programs and substantial cost savings.
Wozniak's proposal is similar to an idea Gov. Ed Rendell introduced during his February budget address.
Wozniak wants a 15-member commission that would hold 20 public hearings around the state before putting forward a plan to realign districts.
Rendell said the state should aim for about 100 school districts, but Wozniak isn't setting a goal yet.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
The Phila. Inquirer had a similar article yesterday. Consolidation does NOT sound all that "inevitable" to me, at least in the short-term. It sounds like what's really inevitable is a political crapstorm.
Pa. school-consolidation legislation introduced
By Dan Hardy
Inquirer Staff Writer
Saying school districts in Pennsylvania are inefficient because most are too small, a western Pennsylvania state senator introduced legislation yesterday calling for a 15-member commission to develop a plan to consolidate them.
The commission would hold hearings and lay out at least two plans within a year of its appointment that would outline mergers and a five-year consolidation process, under a bill offered by State Sen. John Wozniak (D., Cambria).
If the legislature did not approve of either proposal, the state Board of Education would come up with a new plan that would be implemented without going back to the General Assembly.
School consolidation moved onto the legislative agenda when Gov. Rendell called in his February budget for Pennsylvania to have no more than 100 school districts, as an efficiency move to save money. There are now 501.
Consolidation is not high on the agenda of Senate Republicans, Senate Education Committee Chairman Jeffrey Piccola (R., Dauphin) said earlier this week. Piccola said he had found little support in the Senate for the idea, and would not hold any hearings on the proposal until this fall at the earliest.
Wozniak's proposed bill does not set any specific parameters for consolidation, only saying that district size should be "consistent with the ability to maximize student achievement and to achieve economies of scale with regard to operational efficiency."
"Pennsylvania taxpayers can no longer afford the sacred turf and parochialism of the current school system," he said yesterday. "If Pennsylvania schools were in a competitive business, they would have been closed down by redundant management, excessive paperwork, and limited buying power."
State Education Secretary Gerald Zahorchak spoke alongside Wozniak at a news conference in Harrisburg yesterday, calling for consolidation.
Though there are minor differences between the Rendell proposal and Wozniak's, "the most important thing is that the issue is moving forward," said Pennsylvania Department of Education spokesman Michael Race. ". . . It's a discussion that's long overdue.,
Among Pennsylvania's 501 school districts, more than 40 percent have fewer than 2,000 students and more than 80 percent have fewer than 5,000 students. The last large-scale consolidation was in the 1960s, when the number of districts was cut from 2,277 to 669. The decade after that, the number was cut to 505.
The Pennsylvania School Boards Association released a research paper yesterday with a different perspective from Wozniak's. It said there were no documented cases of savings from consolidation and mergers have had a "negative impact" on student achievement. The association said that "if the state wants to reduce the number of districts, it needs to encourage mergers by providing incentives and assistance."
Race, the education department spokesman, said that when the 1,800-student Center Area and the 700-student Monaca school districts in western Pennsylvania merge in July, "by their estimates, it will save about $1.4 million a year."
Post a Comment