County school districts appear to be all the rage. The panel studying shared services is planning to discuss legislation proposed by its chairman, state Sen. Bob Smith (D-Middlesex), that would create 21 county school districts that would have administrative control and transform local districts into advisory bodies.
The plan, according to supporters, would save significant money and seems to fit in with the state-wide push — which I support — for consolidation of government.
“Seems” is the operative word here. The need to consolidate and streamline is obvious. There are too many school districts in the state and way too many that include just one or two schools. That includes both Cranbury and Jamesburg, districts that are part of our coverage area (it also includes other small districts covered by our other papers). It is obvious that these districts cannot provide the same kind of programs that larger districts provide without spending a lot of money (Cranbury can do this because its taxpayers are relatively well-off; Jamesburg, with little property wealth and a lower income level, cannot). Consolidation, therefore, could help.
But merging all 25 school districts in Middlesex County into one larger district, even if you leave current district lines in place, poses too many challenges. Middlesex County, for instance, is the third largest district by population and is nearly three times the size of Mercer. It is a county with several distinct regions that have little in common and a county dominated politically by two incredibly large towns that account for more than one out of every four county residents.
Rather than creating a more efficient and cost-effective educational program, I can see it creating a new kind of bureaucratic morass that leaves the students in the southern part of the county behind.
A better approach might be for the state to determine what the ideal size of a school district might be — 10,000 students, for instance, or districts that cover 40,000 residents. Those are arbitrary numbers, I admit, but I choose them for a reason. I think the South Brunswick school district is a workable size, large enough to provide a good mix of programming without too much administrative overlap, but not too big that the concerns of parents or students get lost. It is not perfect, but creating a bureaucracy that is double, triple or, as with the county proposal, 16 times the size seems crazy.
I could still see some administrative functions being passed along to the county of some larger entity — such as negotiation of teacher contracts, which might also have the benefit of leveling the playing field for districts like Jamesburg or the urban schools that cannot compete with the richer schools on the salaries or benefits they can offer.
But reducing 611 school districts down to 21, as the Smith bills would do, seems absurd. Cutting the total in half or by two thirds, however, might retain the local character of the districts and save money at the same time, giving us the best of both.
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Hank Kalet 