State backs off push for merging of small schools

By BRITTANY ABERY and JUSTIN MEISINGER Bulletin Contributing Writers

Published on October 30, 2009

Choose your own path to school regionalization, or we'll choose it for you.

That was the message from the state over the past couple of years, and it was enough to keep small Hampshire County schools scrambling.

These schools - such as Pelham, Hadley and Hatfield - quickly formed groups to study the feasibility of joining or forming larger school districts, in anticipation of being forced to consolidate or regionalize as per Gov. Deval Patrick's Readiness Project, a 10-year strategic plan that, in part, urged mergers for the state's small school districts.

The commonwealth has long believed that merging financially strapped school districts would be an effective way to cut costs, but districts have remained skeptical about the tangible benefits.

And now, a tight state budget means the Beacon Hill can't provide incentives to merge. With no legislation requiring districts to merge, the state has been forced to back off from its initial stance.

"The state definitely pulled back," said Hadley Superintendent Nick Young.

Jonathan Palumbo, a spokesman for Massachusetts Secretary of Education Paul Reville, said the state still believes that regional school districts are the way forward, but districts have to want to merge.

"The drive for regionalization needs to come from the local level," said Palumbo.

He said the department needs to do more research to ultimately determine the best ways to cut costs. "We still think given the economic uncertainty, that we need to do a top-to-bottom review as a way to achieve more efficiency," said Palumbo.

Beacon Hill has been pushing school district mergers for more than 20 years as a cost-savings measure, but the state can no longer afford to cover the initial costs of a merger.

Young, who's been studying the issue statewide, said there's no financial incentive to merge. "There's no money for any of this, not at the state or local level," he said.

Administrators say that with their own tight budgets they can't front the money. Hadley and Hatfield had been investigating the possibility of a merger, but discovered in the long run it would cost nearly $1 million. A similar study that looked at the possibility of a regional elementary school district for the towns of Amherst, Leverett, Pelham and Shutesbury also didn't reveal any great savings or benefits.

"For now, it's just not realistic to assume any districts could afford the cost in the current state of things economically," said Hatfield Superintendent Francis Gougeon.

Administrators received a $25,000 state grant to study this, but that's all the financial assistance the state makes available.

Administrators say the plan would have made more financial sense nearly two decades ago, when the state was able to help schools cover the costs. But Beacon Hill stopped budgeting for regionalization in 1990 - and the efficiency of larger districts remains unproven.

Gougeon said, given the initial costs, the state would have to provide some incentive to regionalize.

"We would certainly resume a regionalization discussion if a law were passed that revised regionalization funding and made state money available," said Gougeon.

Hadley and Hatfield aren't ruling out other types of cost-sharing agreements, such as holding joint professional development days for teachers, sharing special education programs and transportation, joint purchasing, and sharing some administrative personnel.

"We continue to look at other ways to save money through collaborative efforts," said Young.

For now, though, a merger is off the table.

"They thought there'd be a big savings," said Young. "Now studies have caused the firepower to fizzle from behind this."