Need for control of costs could lead to consolidations

Imagine for a minute.

The Springfield-South Range School District.

Imagine closer to the core: The Campbell- Struthers School District.

On the other side of the line in Trumbull County, you could have the McDonald-Mineral Ridge School District.

This list could go on. In fact, 27 or our 34 school districts in the two counties could entertain such a reformation. It stems from a new statistic that is gaining traction in America.

The stat is the number of school districts with a student population below 2,500. That size, experts say, is deemed not too small and not too big when it comes to gaining and losing cost efficiencies.

We in the Valley have an all-too-familiar role with this stat, too — we are the worst in Ohio. We have 34 school districts in our metro area (the two counties). Eighty percent of the districts fall below 2,500 students. (Akron and Cleveland are at 50 percent).

It’s easier to note our seven districts that are above 2,500: Niles, Canfield, Howland, Boardman, Austintown, Warren and Youngstown.

Poland just misses at 2,388 students, and Lowellville and Bloomfield-Mespo districts are at the end with 428 and 351, respectively.

Shrinking the number of school districts in Ohio is a key thrust in a new movement that will soon engulf Ohio. It’s called “Restoring Prosperity,” and it is led by nonprofit heavyweights The Brookings Institution of Washington, D.C., and Greater Ohio Policy Center of Columbus.

Shrinking the number of school districts will shrink costs. (More on that in a minute.)

If you want to dismiss this as another wonkish think-tank agenda that gets headlines then sits, please go Google “Maine school consolidation.”

Brookings engaged Maine much like it plans to do with Ohio. The result has been extremely controversial but transformational.

Maine had 290 school districts before Brookings took up the cause. It started during a governor’s election year (see “Ohio” this year), and both candidates were challenged to embrace the plan to reduce districts.

They did, and a 2007 Maine law redirected school aid and essentially mandated school districts under 2,500 students to find a dance partner to merge. It has not been warmly received by all. In November, there was a repeal effort. It was defeated.

And it’s all Buckeye-bound.

The effort does not target “the principals and tigers,” as Tom Humphries calls it — meaning it doesn’t seek to merge or close schools and programs. The effort targets the high cost of school administration.

To translate: You could still have the McDonald Blue Devils and the Mineral Ridge Rams. It would just be supervised by one superintendent.

Humphries has had a front-row seat on this since 2007. As president of the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber, his group launched a school-consolidation initiative. And they were ridiculed by the school elite. Humphries has continued the effort but at a statewide level.

“This thing happens one of two ways,” Humphries said. “Either all the school boards agree, which is unlikely, or the state Legislature mandates it.”

Now the movement is joined by Brookings, Greater Ohio, Maine and a host of other states, including Pennsylvania.

Why Ohio?

We rank 47th in the country in spending in elementary and secondary instruction.

We rank 9th in administration spending.

Our spending on school administration is 49 percent higher than the national average.

Virginia, a state that Humphries uses as a good comparison to Ohio, has better test scores than Ohio yet half the school administrative costs.

Lavea Brachman is part of the Greater Ohio team that will tackle this effort. She expects a local process to start in a couple of months.

“We envision a top-down and bottom-up process. [We’re] working to develop a ‘cookbook’ for how localities could carry out these measures.”

To date, they’ve worked with The Raymond John Wean Foundation, the Mahoning Valley Organizing Collaborative and other local groups to strategize.

And the effort is not limited to schools.

“Townships, school districts, 9-1-1, fire departments — everything is up for grabs,” she said.

Brookings’ Bruce Katz said our current fiscal breaking point (see Mahoning County jail, engineer’s office, city schools, Stambaugh Golf Course, etc.) is also our best opportunity.

“We have a brutal economy,” he said at a February meeting, citing the economic battle with China as far worse than what we endured with Germany and Japan in the 1980s.

“It’s not sufficient to just respond to the pain,” said Katz, regarding the federal stimulus plan.

“We’ve been great at building for the future. We have to rebuild. We cannot sustain this.”