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Please no more talk of school district consolidation, It’s never happening. Township maybe countywide never. Many districts including mine would never in a billion years vote for it.
^^This^^
An out of state friend of mine lives in a county that consolidated their school districts and it has been a disaster. The overall performance of the consolidated district has declined so much that many parents choose to either (a) put their kids in private school if they can afford to, or (b) move to another county. And costs did not go down in any meaningful way after consolidation.
Here's two examples from an email link my friend sent me not long ago:
"Consolidating schools and changing boundaries are about as close as you can get to thermonuclear war in the school business" (from one of the current trustees)
"The district has seen enrollment drop over the past few decades from 180,000 students to about 157,000 now. Much of that decline is attributed to families leaving for charter schools. Projections show a further drop in students unless the district can continue attracting them back."
Interestingly, a pre-consolidation study done at the Dept of Education at one of his state's universities concluded that countywide consolidation would likely yield the following results:
Cost savings can be expected for consolidations involving small districts, but as the size of the consolidated district increases past 3,200 students, costs are expected to rise, not fall.
While there are many counties where all of the districts are sufficiently small to gain from consolidation, the existing districts in the specific counties under analysis already enjoy substantial economies of scale and would lose important incentives to behave efficiently were they to be consolidated. There is no reason to believe that this proposal would lead to improvements in student performance, and good reason to believe student performance would fall. The bottom line is that bigger is not always better.
The real-world result has been that his now-consolidated district either has closed or is considering closing more than 20 schools which means more and more kids are getting bussed to schools farther and farther away. Not what the parents envisioned when promised all of the "savings" and "improvements" that the consolidation was supposed to bring. And capital improvements still have to be funded by bond issues, nothing has changed in that regard.
Last edited by BBCjunkie; 12-24-2019 at 11:39 AM..
An out of state friend of mine lives in a county that consolidated their school districts and it has been a disaster. The overall performance of the consolidated district has declined so much that many parents choose to either (a) put their kids in private school if they can afford to, or (b) move to another county. And costs did not go down in any meaningful way after consolidation.
Here's two examples from an email link my friend sent me not long ago:
"Consolidating schools and changing boundaries are about as close as you can get to thermonuclear war in the school business" (from one of the current trustees)
"The district has seen enrollment drop over the past few decades from 180,000 students to about 157,000 now. Much of that decline is attributed to families leaving for charter schools. Projections show a further drop in students unless the district can continue attracting them back."
Interestingly, a pre-consolidation study done at the Dept of Education at one of his state's universities concluded that countywide consolidation would likely yield the following results:
Cost savings can be expected for consolidations involving small districts, but as the size of the consolidated district increases past 3,200 students, costs are expected to rise, not fall.
While there are many counties where all of the districts are sufficiently small to gain from consolidation, the existing districts in the specific counties under analysis already enjoy substantial economies of scale and would lose important incentives to behave efficiently were they to be consolidated. There is no reason to believe that this proposal would lead to improvements in student performance, and good reason to believe student performance would fall. The bottom line is that bigger is not always better.
The real-world result has been that his now-consolidated district either has closed or is considering closing more than 20 schools which means more and more kids are getting bussed to schools farther and farther away. Not what the parents envisioned when promised all of the "savings" and "improvements" that the consolidation was supposed to bring. And capital improvements still have to be funded by bond issues, nothing has changed in that regard.
Yeah but that means that the county schools overall weren't s--t to begin with if consolidation can cause such a drastic decrease in services
Nassau currently has way more "good" districts than "bad" ones. People will still go to their zone schools anyway. Look this is why you're supposed to be paying these people - to work it out. We shouldn't even be giving them all these free ideas on C-D anyway. That's the equivalent of me hiring a contractor but he's making me hold the ladder and pass him stuff.
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"The man who sleeps on the floor, can never fall out of bed." -Martin Lawrence
They’ve already approved a half billion dollar plan to remediate the plume. So I guess “weed filtering” didn’t pass muster.
Their loss, would've had clean water and cheap clean fuel to boot. The only thing you can do with industrial hemp after it bioremediates the affected area is to turn it into fuel. Nobody would ever have to worry about how they're paying an electric bill ever again
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"The man who sleeps on the floor, can never fall out of bed." -Martin Lawrence
In Bern Switzerland, (I believe its Bern), a favorite pasttime of the Bernese in the summer is to go swimming in the river that flows through the heart of the city - the water is that clean
I don't even know what major city in the entire US where that's possible. Food for thought.
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"The man who sleeps on the floor, can never fall out of bed." -Martin Lawrence
In Bern Switzerland, (I believe its Bern), a favorite pasttime of the Bernese in the summer is to go swimming in the river that flows through the heart of the city - the water is that clean
I don't even know what major city in the entire US where that's possible. Food for thought.
What you wouldn’t want to go for a swim in the Hudson? Lol! I think the NYPD dive teams practically use a space suit when diving there. Pretty sad. Happy holidays to you as well!
What you wouldn’t want to go for a swim in the Hudson? Lol! I think the NYPD dive teams practically use a space suit when diving there. Pretty sad. Happy holidays to you as well!
Space suit
I dont mean to laugh, those guys get credit, they're better than me, they put their lives on the line, I'll pay taxes for that
NYPD is damn near military, they are on another level, they get props from me for what they do
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"The man who sleeps on the floor, can never fall out of bed." -Martin Lawrence
Schools should consolidate. People still believe schools are the reason to success. And since people believe in that, they place all their hope into it and pay those school taxes, but the renters... dont
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