Eliminate our school district

[science professor]

As I posted under the bond defeat topic, I believe that a district as small as ours is economic nonesense and should be officially eliminated. Council Rock High School in PA, though not the model I envision, has more students than our entire "district." It seems silly that 3 schools need almost half a million dollars worth of administration (and that is just the salary, expenses and benefits of the 3 reported administrators) to "run" them. Logically, we should merge with Allentown given the proximity and similarity of socioeconomic characteristics; that this neighbor is in a different county should not be a deterrent to such a process (although county feudal lords may disagree). I would welcome East Windsor too; we will be needing economies of scale as our state allocations shrink.

[UWB]

When people advocate school district consolidation as a mean to save money, it sounds good in the abstract but is often lacking in hard numbers. "Let's get rid of administrators" is the rallying cry since administrators don't do much and make a lot of money.

Here is the problem when two districts look at consolidation. One district often has the students and the other has the property wealth. An example in the extreme is a shore town, say Sea Isle City, which has a K-4 school and then sends it's students to a neighboring district and pays tuition. It has no economic incentive to eliminate itself and combine with the neighboring district because Sea Isle City has tons of property wealth and very few students. The same problem would occur if Allentown/Upper Freehold combined with Robbinsville. Even if you could eliminate a couple of administrators, one district's school taxes are going up because of the consolidation even though you are saving money. The taxpayers of that district will not go for this.

[science professor]

Thanks to UWB for a response. It seems that the example given is an extreme. A shore town's school district is, of course, rich in property value and poor in school age kids. We elect school boards the job of which is to understand the specifics of the school district. If their charge becomes how to attain economy of scale, then let them suggest one or more plans. My off the cuff suggestions were simply to begin a conversation. If the board and voters simply focus within the district, I think all we will be doing is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. UWB mentioned a lack of hard data to support the economic benefits of district consolidation. One hard datum I have that prompts my call for efficiency of scale is the phone call I made today to the tax assessor discovering that my property tax has increased about $1000 this year. So, I call upon UWB to offer realistic solutions to our onerous, regressive, nationally record-holding property tax system. Since I again wasted my NO vote in the recent school budget election, how about the school board offer some substantive proposals? To simply transfer the school tax to the state income tax without addressing the underlying inefficiencies does not seem to be that helpful, although at least that would make local taxation less regressive. If UWB and those of like minds want to keep all of these school districts in NJ for whatever reasons, then how about consolidating administration as well as ancillary services? Let's focus on what might work.