Groups Sue to Stop School Consolidation as Budget Shortfalls Prompt New Calls for Mergers

On December 5, 2002, parents in Lincoln County, West Virginia and two anti-consolidation groups, the Committee to Stop Discrimination Against Rural Children and the Save Harts High Committee, filed suit against the county and state superintendents and the state school board. The suit aims to block the state from consolidating Lincoln County's four high schools into one. Plaintiffs claim that the state, which took over the county's schools in 2000, did not follow its own rules for school consolidation because the takeover, supposedly prompted by low test scores, was actually meant as a vehicle for consolidation. The state takeover came shortly after the state board voted to combine the schools. Controversy over the consolidation of rural schools has been a long-standing problem in West Virginia, and residents of McDowell County filed a similar lawsuit in 2001.

As a result of widespread budget shortfalls in almost every state, however, some states that had big consolidation drives in the early 1990's are now trying to close small schools again. In the summer of 2002, for example, the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction floated a plan to bring down the number of districts from 218 to 62. At the beginning of December 2002, two district superintendents in Kansas released a plan for a regional education district, while two other rural Kansas districts asked the State Board of Education for permission to consolidate. The superintendents said that Kansas could eliminate $220 million in extra funds to its smallest districts. Lincoln County, West Virginia Superintendent Bill Grizzell also cited the costs of operating four high schools for 1,700 students, and Rose Hermodson, a retired education activist in Minnesota, is promoting a plan for countywide school districts as the state faces a projected $4.6 billion budget deficit. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, which has followed Hermodson's activities, reported that at least 40 Minnesota districts are potential candidates for mergers based on state criteria such as declining student enrollment and budget problems.

While opposition to consolidation is most likely to come from the residents of small, rural towns, where schools provide a sense of community amidst financial woes and declining populations, some education experts are also against combining schools. In October, 2002, the Rural School and Community Trust released a study concluding that while smaller schools may appear to have higher per-pupil costs, some actually have lower per-graduate costs, as small schools are sometimes better than larger ones at helping at-risk students succeed. For this reason, some urban districts are moving from large schools to smaller ones.

Jack Geller of the Center for Rural Policy and Development at Minnesota State University, Mankato, and Greg Thorson, an associate professor of political science at the University of Minnesota, Morris, also question the wisdom of per-pupil calculations. A report written for the Center for Rural Policy by Thorson and a colleague suggests raising state funding by eight percent for each district's first 500 students and four percent for the next 500. Districts with more than 1,000 students would keep their present funding levels. This would cost $77 million, but Geller says that that is less than two percent of total state education revenues: "On a per-pupil basis, their costs are extremely high. But in terms of overall dollars, it's budget dust."

Prepared December 23, 2002