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Study: Recasting Mich. schools would save millions; DetNews-August 15, 2010
Topic Started: Aug 15 2010, 05:55 PM (231 Views)
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Study: Recasting Mich. schools would save millions
Associated Press

Lansing -- Michigan taxpayers could save $612 million a year by reshaping or consolidating public schools along county lines, according to a report published Sunday.

The annual savings after three years from trimming school management layers, recasting administration and erasing district boundaries would equal roughly 4 percent of total school budgets, says a study from Michigan State University researchers that was commissioned by Booth Newspapers.

The switch could be made without closing a single school or shifting students, according to the study. The savings would come from realigning services and administration at Michigan's 550 school districts largely along county boundaries.

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A less-involved plan that would preserve local school district lines but rely heavily on shared services such as transportation and food service at the county level could save Michigan taxpayers $328 million, according to the study.

Michigan is one of several states where talk about school consolidation and shared services has heated up because of financial problems during a down economy.

"Maybe the way things are set up now was good public policy and made sense 20 years ago, when the money was there. There's nothing wrong with paying people a nice wage and having small school districts," Tom Watkins, a former Michigan state schools superintendent, told Booth Newspapers for the story Sunday. "Now there is declining enrollment and choice and charters, yet the infrastructure is operating as if nothing has changed. They need a reason better than 'We've always done it this way.'"

Michigan has the nation's fifth-highest number of school districts, and forcing mergers is legally and politically difficult. Michigan has a long history of allowing local control in public school districts, and voters have approved only two mergers in the past 10 years. Legislative efforts to spark or force more consolidation have largely fallen flat.

Most Michigan school districts "resist any efforts" toward consolidation, Michigan State University researcher Sharif Shakrani said.

But Shakrani and the university's Education Policy Center said schools could save money by tapping into the structure provided by 57 intermediate school districts operating in the state, mostly shaped by the borders of one or more counties. The regional districts were created to provide services that are too expensive or large for individual districts to offer on their own.

Shakrani said money would be saved through economies of scale and eliminating administrative and operational redundancies.

"Many people hear consolidation and they think about closing schools, but that doesn't have to be the case," Shakrani said.

Mike Flanagan, Michigan's current state schools superintendent, wants intermediate districts to take on more responsibility under the shared-services model.

"If I could wave a wand over the state, I'd keep the local districts, but there would be a lot more done at the county level, as you see in Florida," Flanagan said. "A countywide system is going to feel so much more impersonal. You have so many places where the school district is the whole identity for the town. When they think of their schools, they have that pride and they have a voice."



From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20100815/SCHOOLS/8150311/1026/rss06#ixzz0wiKuOO3R
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Study: Genesee County schools could save $26.2 million through consolidation
Published: Sunday, August 15, 2010, 12:00 PM
Kristin Longley | Flint Journal

GENESEE COUNTY, Michigan — It’s a controversial question — and the answer could drastically change our children’s education: Does Genesee County need 21 public school districts?

Maybe. Or maybe not. But isn’t it time someone asks the question?

For the first time, a Michigan State University study estimates the county’s 21 public school districts could collectively save $26.2 million if they were to consolidate into a single countywide school district.

It’s a drastic and emotionally-charged suggestion.



Parent Jane Cody, who has two daughters in Lake Fenton schools, said she wouldn’t want to risk such a change, since her daughters are performing well academically and socially.
“I’d hate for it to change and be something different,” she said. “We’ve always had good luck and good classes.”

But it’s a scenario facing many Michigan communities as state lawmakers continue to agonize over school funding and districts struggle to balance quality education with crumbling infrastructure.

Consolidation has been talked about here for decades — most recently in 2002 when Burton voters rejected a proposal to consolidate the Atherton, Bendle and Bentley districts.

“It’s something that needs to be looked at,” said Burton Councilwoman Paula Zelenko, who led the charge to consolidate the Burton districts when she served in the state House. “There is money to be saved.

“But it’s something that needs to be decided here locally.”

Parents back then weren’t sold, and now officials say a countywide merger is even less probable — not to mention even more controversial. Neighborhood school districts are an intensely personal issue for many families.

Supporters of consolidation point to increased class selection and an improved curriculum and savings through fewer administrative salaries and other duplicate costs.




ESTIMATED SAVINGS
Here’s what a Michigan State University study estimates Genesee County’s 21 public school districts would save collectively if they were to consolidate into one countywide district.


•Operation: $6,122,272



•Instruction: $3,095,448



•Administration: $11,988,973


•Transportation: $5,024,622
•TOTAL: $26,231,315

It’s a battle of cost-savings and efficiency versus school pride and local heritage. Among the myriad of debates that invoke both the head and the heart, the issue of school consolidation is a prime example.
“It’s a very emotional issue, consolidation,” said Sharif Shakrani, lead researcher and director of MSU’s Education Policy Center. “The psychological aspect enters into this very heavily.”

Still, the debate keeps surfacing as the cash-strapped state and school districts look to save dollars and cents. The state recently asked school districts to submit a plan on how they plan to consolidate or share services.

State Superintendent Mike Flanagan on the state’s website said moving toward regional consolidation “will help save money and focus local school resources on the top priority — increasing student achievement.”

Schools throughout the county are losing students to charter and private school competitors and through population shifts. Local public school enrollment has dropped 12.2 percent, or nearly 10,000 students, over the last 10 years.

For the study, researchers from MSU’s Education Policy Center took 2008-09 data submitted to the state by local school districts and calculated the potential savings of shared transportation, administration and operations.

The estimated savings in Genesee County is less than 4 percent of the 21 districts’ combined general fund spending — which totals more than $700 million annually.

Other findings include:

• Instead of fully consolidating, the districts could collectively save an estimated $11.1 million if they maximized coordination of services instead of fully consolidating.

• There are 137 school buildings in Genesee County for a student population that has dropped by nearly 10,000 students over the past decade.

• The estimated annual savings for each district range from about $253,000 in the Genesee School District to $7.4 million in the Flint School District.

Unless the state Legislature mandated countywide consolidation, such a move would require approval from voters in all 21 school districts.

But in a city and county that can’t even agree to consolidate its libraries or 911 systems, would voters really agree to merge its school districts?

Not likely.

There’s something to be said about saving taxpayers dollars — but for many it’s also about being a Bentley bulldog, a Flint Northwestern wildcat or a Beecher buccaneer.

“For a place like Genesee County, it’s not going to work out very well,” Shakrani said. “You have such a diversity of districts from a core urban district to a very rural small district.”

But Shakrani said some voters might be more open to the idea to some consolidation, especially with the area’s tough economy.

Bob Campbell, Flint schools spokesman, declined to comment for the story.

Fenton High School senior Sean Rositano, 17, weighed what he considers the pros (saving money) and cons (uncertainty over what could happen), and ultimately said countywide consolidation is probably too risky.

“You might sacrifice the quality of education in one or more of the school districts,” he said.

But when asked about consolidating some districts, such as Fenton and Lake Fenton, Sean was much more open to the idea. There could be advantages for the athletic program and it would be nice if another, larger high school were built, he said.

“Fenton is bursting at the seams right now,” he said. “There could be costs to that too, but maybe in 10 years it could be a good thing.”

State Sen. John Gleason, D-Flushing, said the state is heading toward consolidation, a day when “consolidation is no longer talked about — it will be implemented.” But what form the consolidation will take is the question.

Gleason said he’s skeptical countywide consolidation would be enforced by lawmakers, and doesn’t see a day when voters would approve such a drastic change.

He said there’s too much divisiveness between city and county voters. The recently failed millage for Hurley Medical Center is an example.

“You’d have people saying, ‘Well we don’t want the trouble of the Flint schools out here in Fenton or Clio,’” he said. “It would be very difficult.”

Others question whether countywide consolidation — touted by some as a way to improve the curriculum and provide a better future for students — is really worth the estimated savings.

Bette Bigsby, an Atherton school board member for more than 16 years, said it would “certainly bring a lot of uncertainty in districts.”

Schools would technically have to issue layoff notices to their employees, and coordinating a countywide curriculum would take years, she said.

And, she said, what about hidden costs?

“It’s kind of like your budget at home,” she said. “It looks fantastic on paper, then you found out you forgot to pay the paper boy. It would take a huge effort, and I’m not sure the savings are there.”

The MSU study pointed out that county intermediate school districts, such as the Genesee Intermediate School District, already exist to help maximize shared services among school districts.

GISD outgoing Superintendent Thomas Svitkovich said he would estimate the GISD saves Genesee County districts a combined $10 million already.

The GISD performs business services for half of the county’s districts, and other partnerships for transportation, maintenance and operations exist as well. Not to mention GenNET, the GISD’s fiber optic connection that allows voice, video, and data transmission among all districts.

Svitkovich said there are other areas in which Genesee County schools can share services and save money, but a countywide merger isn’t the answer. Svitkovich and Jerry Johnson, the GISD’s communications director, said there comes a point where it doesn’t make sense to consolidate.

“One size doesn’t fit all,” Johnson said. “You can’t just create a whole new system in the name of saving resources without a real purpose.”

Zelenko served in the state House of Representatives when Burton-area voters were faced with the decision to consolidate Atherton, Bendle and Bentley school districts. She led the charge to get the Legislature to pony up an extra $1 million a year for three years — if the districts consolidated.

It still failed.

A joint committee explored consolidation for more than a year before all three school boards agreed to put the issue before voters. It passed in Atherton and Bentley, but failed in Bendle.

Atherton voters pulled an about-face a year later and voted down an Atherton-Bentley merger.

Back then, the issue morphed into a turf war, and Zelenko fears the same would happen again today.

“It was more important to be a Wolverine or a Bulldog or a Bendle Tiger,” she said.

Now, she wouldn’t support a forced consolidation of all Genesee County districts, but still believes a merger among some or all of the Burton districts is fairest to the taxpayers.

If Atherton and Bentley were consolidated today, she estimates that the combined district would still be a little bit smaller than what each one of them was in the early 1970s, when she was in school. Today, one transportation system, one building and grounds department and a shared curriculum just makes more sense for the smaller districts, she said.

“We’ll be able to offer more sports, more extracurricular activities and a deeper curriculum,” she said. “It’s a tough sell, but I think folks are more receptive today than they were eight years ago.

“What I’m afraid of is a Legislature or a governor that might spearhead consolidating — and we wouldn’t have a choice.”

http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2010/08/study_genesee_county_schools_c.html
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Collaboration, not consolidation: Bay County school chiefs agree that sharing services is best for future
Published: Sunday, August 15, 2010, 5:01 AM
Andrew Dodson | The Bay City Times


Bay City Public Schools Superintendent Douglas Newcombe during a roundtable discussion on school consolidation in Bay County.

Bay County school administrators say they all agree that collaboration, not consolidation, is the best way for districts to continue operating within their financial means.

They also agree, however, that the topic of consolidation continues to be a hot debate.

Bay County’s five school chiefs — Douglas Newcombe, John Mertz, Darren Kroczaleski, Michael Dewey and Shawn Bishop — discussed the topic again this week in the wake of a Michigan State University Study which says Michigan schools could save $612 million by consolidating to county levels.

In Bay County, the report says those savings would be about $5 million if the county’s four public school districts became one mega-district with 14,500 students.

The study, commissioned by The Bay City Times and seven affiliate newspapers, was conducted by researchers from MSU’s Education Policy Center.

Without consolidating, the study also says that Bay County schools can save more than $2 million through continued collaboration. That’s where local administrators say they’ll continue to focus.




Watch the entire roundtable discussion.


“We’ve made the point that we can collaborate and work together,” said Essexville-Hampton Public Schools Superintendent John Mertz. “We’ve risen to the challenge.”

School districts across Bay County already share certain transportation services, business offices, professional development and other services, with help from the Bay-Arenac Intermediate School District. Special needs education is also handled through the Bay-Arenac ISD for all county districts.

“We started this a long time ago,” said Pinconning Area Schools Superintendent Darren Kroczaleski.

“The state has had all of these mandates for consolidating services, but we’re ahead of the curve. We just need to report it now.”


More on school consolidation
•ROUNDTABLE: A multimedia interview with Bay County school superintendents on the realities of consolidation
•Michigan's system of 550 public school districts could save millions with consolidations, but what do we lose?
•Why are charter schools not part of the consolidation debate?
•School consolidation: The most difficult animal to kill is a school mascot
•Read the MSU study on the costs & benefits of school consolidation
The school chiefs expressed skepticism about the true value of consolidating into a countywide school district and were critical of the MSU study.

“Frankly, I don’t think someone down in a cubicle trying to run calculations is going to be the best person to deal with on that,” said Bay City Public Schools Superintendent Douglas Newcombe, who previously worked as the district’s director of finance.

“You just don’t know all the practical aspects of what it means to operate a school system, just as you would with any other business.”

Bay-Arenac ISD Superintendent Michael Dewey said the common misnomer when the public thinks consolidation is less administration.

“In reality, across our county and the ISD, there are only a couple of assistants,” he said. “Reality will hit, and you may have one superintendent, but you will have a number of deputy superintendents to take over those other roles in a larger district.

“There’s not enough hours in the day.”

Bangor Township Schools Superintendent Shawn Bishop, Bay County’s newest school chief, said the communities of each school district are what makes each unique, and consolidating would take that away.

“It’s part of who we are,” he said. “Losing that identity from those different cultures would be a big mindset shift.”

Without consolidation, though, collaboration, or the sharing of services, is a must, said Dewey. He said the Michigan Department of Education continues to get smaller and is looking toward ISDs to take on a greater role and be the nucleus for sharing services.

That’s an opinion shared by MSU researchers.

“The state department had 4,000 people in it when I started in 1979. Now they’re down to less than 300,” Dewey said. “They’re expecting more from us.

“I don’t think the role of the ISD is going to change, it’s going to be enhanced.”

That includes the ISD being heavily relied upon to do monitoring, auditing and data warehousing, Dewey said.

School consolidation is not a new topic to the area.

Last year, a six month debate to consolidate Au Gres-Sims and Arenac Eastern school districts ended with a public vote that had Au Gres-Sims residents in favor, but Arenac Eastern residents opposed.

In order to consolidate school districts, residents from both districts must vote to support the decision.

Then Au Gres-Sims Superintendent Gary Marchel said the cost savings were not significant enough to warrant consolidation.

“It’s a matter of improving on what we can offer our students,” he said in an interview with the Times in 2009.

Dewey said the shared service model for Bay County works right now, and comments and questions of consolidation tend to lose focus on the purpose of public education.

“We need to stay focused on what is in the best interest of the community, school districts and the children you serve,” he said. “It’s about public education, meeting the needs of all children.

“America has a unique public education system because we educate all children, we don’t sort and select.

“This ISD, this county, with my colleagues, we look at every way we can to share our resources to meet the needs of all children.”

Related topics: Bangor Township Schools, Bay City Public Schools, Bay County schools, Essexville-Hampton schools, Pinconning Area Schools

http://www.mlive.com/news/bay-city/index.ssf/2010/08/video_collaboration_not_consol.html
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School districts in Southwest Michigan moving toward merging operations to save money
Published: Sunday, August 15, 2010, 3:32 AM
Julie Mack | Kalamazoo Gazette


CENTREVILLE — If it’s Wednesday, then Rob Kuhlman must be in Centreville, settling into his new job as superintendent of Centreville Public Schools.

But if it’s Thursday, then Kuhlman is in Mendon — he’s the new Mendon superintendent, as well.


Kuhlman, who started his new jobs last month, is one of a few school chiefs in Michigan overseeing more than one district. But while sharing a superintendent is unique, sharing an employee has become increasingly common for districts.

In fact, Centreville and Mendon — which have a combined enrollment of about 1,700 students — also have a joint business manager, food-services director and maintenance supervisor, not to mention a bus mechanic who also works for Burr Oak and Colon schools.

Even as Michigan school officials fiercely resist pressures from Lansing to consolidate, the state’s ongoing financial crisis is forcing them to rethink the way they do business. More and more districts are pooling resources or giving up part of their operation to outside agencies, whether it be through privatization or contracting with the intermediate school district or another school system.

“Some people are being forced to think that way, and others are being proactive and trying to get ahead of the game,” said Dennis Patzer, superintendent of Otsego Public Schools.

This year alone there’s been a flurry of initiatives. Otsego began sharing its business manager with Martin and a special-education director with Plainwell, and is using the Allegan Area Educational Service Agency for special-education transportation. Plainwell and Martin are sharing a food-services supervisor. Bloomingdale and Gobles have consolidated their bus and building maintenance operations. Parchment, Delton Kellogg, Climax-Scotts and Burr Oak have all turned over part of their business operations to intermediate school districts, or ISDs.

MICHIGAN 10.0

SCHOOL CONSOLIDATION PROS AND CONS
We've spent the past several months exploring issues of vital interest to Michigan. For a full overview of topics, go to mlive.com/mi10


Meanwhile, the Kalamazoo Regional Educational Service Agency and its Allegan counterpart are both studying the possibility of creating countywide bus transportation systems. The Allegan agency also is looking at consolidation of technology-support services and joint purchase of office supplies.

The result, some say, is a trend toward a merging of school-district operations — one that gives up long-treasured local autonomy in favor of fiscal efficiency.

But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, says Patzer and others.

“If we can merge our support services for technology and business and food services and maintenance and still maintain our community identity, we’ll have the best of both worlds,” said Sue Wakefield, superintendent of Plainwell Community Schools. “There’s some good things that can come out of this.”

But school officials and other experts caution that the idea that consolidation would solve Michigan’s K-12 funding problems is a false hope. After years of budget cutting, some of the savings associated with consolidation already have occurred, and even in a best-case scenario, the savings would be marginal in relation to the state’s funding shortfalls.

Consolidation also has the potential to cost taxpayers more and create more bureaucracy. Perhaps the best rationale for further mergers is improving opportunities for rural high school students, some experts say.

“It’s not just a savings issue, it’s an equality issue,” state Superintendent Michael Flanagan said. “Sharing services on a countywide level brings services to everyone.”

Problems with small districts
With 550 K-12 school systems, Michigan has one of the most decentralized school systems in the country.

There is a strong case to be made for consolidation of some kind. Research indicates small districts, particularly those with fewer than 1,000 students, have some serious drawbacks. From the standpoint of taxpayers, small districts are financially inefficient.

For staff, that inefficiency results in relatively low pay, few resources and lack of administrative support. Students can be hurt by a limited curriculum and few extracurricular activities.

Among the 35 K-12 school districts in the Kalamazoo Gazette circulation area, 11 had less than 1,000 students last fall. They were: Mendon, Centreville, Climax-Scotts, Martin, Decatur, Gobles, Lawrence, Marcellus, White Pigeon, Colon and Burr Oak. Six others with an enrollment of between 1,000 and 1,500 students were: Schoolcraft, Galesburg-Augusta, Hartford, Lawton, Bloomingdale and Bangor.

Tiny Burr Oak, tucked in the southeast corner of St. Joseph County next to Sturgis, is a classic example of the challenges faced by small districts.

With only 292 students in grades K-12, Burr Oak Superintendent Terry Conklin also serves as the K-12 principal and oversees curriculum and special education. The district’s average teacher’s salary in 2008-09 was $36,314 — Sturgis teachers earned an average of $20,000 more. Burr Oak’s low average salary reflects having one of the region’s lowest pay scales, as well as a young staff with high turnover.

Academically, Burr Oak’s test scores are among the lowest in the region. Only five of 30 fourth-graders passed the state’s math test last fall and five passed the reading test. In Burr Oak’s Class of 2011, the median composite score on the ACT college entrance exam was 15.8, which ranks them in the bottom 20 percent of college-bound high school students.

Conklin said small districts such as his are the “heartbeat of their community” and an economic catalyst.

“We generate jobs and money for the community,” he said.

He also defended his district as providing a nurturing environment with plenty of personal attention. “Larger schools function more like a bureaucracy and smaller schools act more like a family,” he said.

“We give kids a kid education,” he added. “We’re here to help kids be productive citizens. If they want to go to college, that’s icing on the cake. But not all kids want to go to college.”

KRESA Superintendent Ron Fuller said there’s a role for small districts in Michigan. “The people who send their kids to Climax or Martin do so for a reason,” he said. “They like what they’re seeing. ... What about relationships? That’s something that small districts bring to the table that large districts do not.”

Others are more skeptical.

“With the pressures of today’s world, I don’t know how you can offer an adequate curriculum in these small schools,” especially at the high school level, Patzer said. “That’s where (the consolidation movement) should be headed.”

Wakefield said it’s unrealistic to expect superintendents of small districts to fulfill every administrative role.

Tom Watkins, state superintendent from 2001 to 2005, strongly supports consolidation.
“Maybe the way things are set up now was good public policy and made sense 20 years ago, when the money was there. There’s nothing wrong with paying people a nice wage and having small school districts,” Watkins said.

“But that’s as if Ford and GM behaved as if Honda, Toyota and Hyundai didn’t exist. Now there is declining enrollment and choice and charters, yet the infrastructure is operating as if nothing has changed. They need a reason better than, ‘We’ve always done it this way.”’

Savings with consolidation?
But consolidation shouldn’t be viewed as a painless strategy to save money and boost achievement, experts say.

“It’s not a panacea at all,” said Sharif Shakrani, a researcher at Michigan State University’s Education Policy Center. “It’s not a solution.”

For one thing, full consolidation is a politically difficult process and must be approved by voters — that’s only happened twice in Michigan in the past decade.

Among the barriers to merging districts: Merging school-debt levies and employee unions, not to mention loyalties to high school athletic teams.

“School funding isn’t rational; it’s political and emotional. And if you threaten cuts, people will say you’re against the kids,” Watkins said.

In a recent study, Shakrani wrote: “There is little research-based evidence to prove that consolidation has solved the problems for which it has been intended — those of finance, staff reduction, facilities and curriculum improvement.”

The Kalamazoo Gazette was among eight affiliated newspapers that commissioned the MSU study amid a growing state and national debate about school consolidation and cost cutting.

The study suggests there could be substantial savings statewide — an estimated $612 million a year, or about 3 percent of K-12 operating expenditures in 2008-09 — if Michigan used its 57 ISDs to create countywide or regional districts.

The study also suggests a less-drastic option: ISDs could take over noninstructional functions such as transportation, food service and business and maintenance operations.

That would save about $328 million, or about 1.7 percent of K-12 operating expenditures, which totaled $19.2 billion in 2008-09.

Shakrani estimates the savings for Kalamazoo County would be $12 million a year for a complete countywide consolidation of KRESA’s nine school districts and $5 million for consolidation of noninstructional services.

Shakrani, an expert in using research to set educational policy, said dollars are saved through economies of scale and eliminating administrative and operational redundancies. The savings do not include closing any buildings or shifting students.

The estimated savings were based on a mathematical formula created by researchers in 2001, who looked at initial savings from school consolidations in Maryland, Virginia and New York during the 1980s and 1990s. The formula assumes savings of 8 percent on building operations, 4 percent in instructional support, 15 percent in administration and 18 percent in transportation within three years of consolidation.

“Overall, consolidation seems to make fiscal sense, particularly in rural and small districts,” Shakrani wrote in the report.

Costs saved already
Local officials question whether consolidations that occurred in other states a decade or two ago can accurately mirror Michigan in 2010 — especially considering that Michigan districts already have gone through six to eight years of streamlining and cost-cutting in the very areas targeted for savings in Shakrani’s study.

Between 2003-04 and 2008-09, K-12 expenditures on business operations, such as handling the bills and payroll, decreased 10 percent statewide and costs for central administration — i.e., the superintendent’s office and staff — rose only 1 percent during that five-year period, according to the Michigan Department of Education.

While higher energy costs increased overall spending on transportation and building operations during that time, expenditures on salaries and benefits in those two categories dropped 1 percent and 9 percent, respectively.

One source of cost-savings: About 45 percent of Michigan school districts now outsource their food, custodial and/or transportation services, according to a 2009 survey by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

Among the 35 school districts in the Kalamazoo Gazette circulation area, spending on direct instructional services to students increased by 10 percent regionwide while spending on noninstructional areas — such as business functions, transportation, building maintenance and administration — declined a collective 8 percent between 2003-04 and 2008-09.

Of the region’s 35 districts, 17 have a full-time finance directors or business managers and 15 have a full-time curriculum director. The remainder combine those responsibilities with another job, share an administrator with another district, or, in the case of business operations, contract with an ISD. In Comstock, for instance, the superintendent also is the curriculum director and the finance director also is in charge of building operations and transportation. Some small districts in the area are down to three administrators: A superintendent and a secondary and elementary principal.

“A lot of consolidation has already happened,” which isn’t factored into numerical models, said Holly Norman, KRESA assistant superintendent for finance.

Shakrani acknowledged his analysis “assumes there isn’t any coordination of services now” between districts, since that information is not available without surveying individual districts. The study also assumed the same levels of savings in every district regardless of cost-saving measures a district already has taken.

“This was a very small study,” Shakrani said. “We were just applying the research based on what happened in other states.”

Will bigger mean cheaper?
The idea of consolidating on a countywide level, either partially or fully, raises other questions.

One concern is the potential that costs could actually increase by moving from smaller to larger districts.

This concern is rooted in two facts: One is that merging different union contracts from various districts could mean substantial raises for some, which could wipe out the cost-savings from being more efficient.

The other factor is that larger school districts almost always pay more. For instance, there’s about as many students in the 10 school districts in St. Joseph County as there are in Kalamazoo Public Schools, the region’s largest district. And while merging St. Joe schools into one district would save the costs of having nine superintendents, there are more administrators making six-figure incomes in KPS than all 10 St. Joseph County school districts combined.

Also, ISDs generally pay better than most regular school districts, so moving services to ISDs wouldn’t necessarily constitute a savings, Wakefield said. “I’m not convinced that bigger is necessarily better,” she said.

Still another concern is that having ISDs take over noninstructional costs would limit individual districts’ ability to control the quality of services in those areas — such as setting the rules on school-bus stops — or cut expenses through privatization or in other ways.

KRESA’s Fuller said that’s a legitimate concern. “I’m with an ISD, but whenever an organization gets bigger and has unfettered power, you can get a monopoly,” he said.

Analysts at the Mackinac Center, which has been a strong advocate for lowering public-education costs, say large-scale consolidation in Michigan “holds little hope of reducing spending.” The center is pushing for more privatization and more charter schools.

While Fuller and others say potential cost savings from countywide consolidation may be overstated, they agree there’s more money to be saved in further coordination of services.

Instead of forced one-size-fits-all-consolidation, Patzer likes what he describes as an “a la carte” approach, where districts can pick and choose those cost-saving strategies that best fit their community.

Flanagan also likes that approach.

“If I could wave a wand over the state, I’d keep the local districts, but there would be a lot more done at the county level, as you see in Florida,” Flanagan said.

“A countywide system is going to feel so much more impersonal. You have so many places where the school district is the whole identity for the town. When they think of their schools, they have that pride and they have a voice.”

Watkins said changes will have to come from Lansing. County and local educators are too close to the situation.

“You need to tell people, ‘If you want to keep your Bulldogs, Colts and other things, then you’re going to have to accept some of these other changes,’” he said.

“When someone shows you death, you accept serious injury more readily. And like the auto industry, unless they totally revamp the way they do business, they’re going to be dead.”

Contact Julie Mack at jmack@kalamazoogazette.com or 269-388-8578. Gazette News Service reporters Dave Murray and Kym Reinstadler contributed to this report.

http://www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2010/08/school_districts_in_southwest.html


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