Consolidating School Districts

Consolidating school districts is a perennial favorite concept among tax activists and education finance reformers here on Long Island. I have investigated this topic in depth and present here my considered opinion about reducing 124 school districts to any meaningfully lesser number.

Why are there 124 separate Long Island school districts? These grew out of historical settlement and population trends well over 100 years ago. They have been maintained over centuries for a number of reasons, including, principally, two:

• Keeping affluent areas apart from poor areas to facilitate higher school spending by wealthy families

• Maintaining racial and cultural segregation of schools among segregated communities.

Other factors, still valid today, include significant costs associated with retiring capital bonds held by each district, and the high cost of “leveling-up” teacher and civil service contracts after merging districts. Whenever two or more districts merge, all of the employees generally transition up to the highest pay and benefits among the merged districts.  If two districts merge, each having outstanding bond obligations, then three districts must be operated (the two original districts and the new, consolidated district), until the bonds are paid off. 

Reserves are another factor; if Wantagh and Seaford had merged two years ago, then Wantagh’s $3 million cash reserves would have had to be commingled with Seaford’s paltry $300,000 reserves.

The final factor is long-term obligations and deficits, especially post-retirement obligations for employee health care, and fiscal deficits, such as those encountered by Seaford over the past several years which wiped-out Seaford’s cash reserves.

Among the ‘fear-factors’ militating against large-scale mergers are the fact that once a group of districts are merged, teachers can be assigned to any school in the merged district for which they are certified, and, students can be assigned similarly, especially when specialized “magnet schools” are inevitably introduced. While consolidation has worked well within the confines of Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District, if neighboring Roosevelt, Uniondale or East Meadow were proposed to added, the debate would be interminable.

Outright merging of school districts cannot be legislated or forced by regulation. Wantagh and Seaford attempted to merge voluntarily while I was on the Wantagh school board, but the state refused permission to proceed, citing lack of potential educational improvement resulting from such a merger.

With that statement deliberately left hanging out there, I will end this blog, promising a follow-up on what could be done, instead of ham-handedly crunching school districts together in the pursuit of dubious or non-existent financial savings. For more information, e-mail chriswendt117@gmail.com.