To merge or not to merge: that is the question. The answer could take years—and a vote—but five Quad-City, Ill.-area school districts are thinking about it, the Quad-City Times reports.
The merger, if approved and carried out, would consolidate the following school districts:
- United Township High School District 30 in East Moline
- Carbon Cliff‐Barstow Elementary School District 36
- Colona Elementary School District 190
- East Moline Elementary School District 37
- Silvis Elementary School District 34
The high school receives students from all four elementary school districts being considered, plus an elementary school district in Hampton, which isn’t part of the merger discussion.
In a public forum last week, attended by about 30 people, Jay Morrow, superintendent of the United Township High School District, presented findings from a feasibility study about the consolidation. The complete study is available on UT’s website, here.
Although the study, which was completed earlier this summer, recommends leaving all 10 schools now in the district open—one high school, four middle schools, and five elementary schools—CBS 4 in Moline reported that the district might end up closing two of the middle schools if a merger took place. District officials, however, did not foresee any reduction in teaching staff.
In 2011, Gov Pat Quinn suggested consolidating smaller school districts in Illinois by county, which would, in many cases, create much larger, unit districts. But funding to support the consolidation efforts has been reduced drastically since the governor’s initial suggestion. In Rock Island County, besides the elementary school district in Hampton, five other school districts exist, all of them unit districts: Moline USD 40, Rock Island SD 41, Riverdale CUSD 100, Sherrard CUSD 200, and Rockridge CUSD 300. There’s no talk of including any schools from these five districts in the merger.
But the consolidation that would take place, if approved, could bring the following benefits for students, according to three former superintendents who conducted the study:
- more enriched extracurricular activities
- the ability to maintain small class sizes
- greater financial stability
- broader curriculum more closely aligned with the Common Core in kindergarten to eighth grade
“When they come to a high school, they in theory should be on the same level playing field,” the Times quoted Mr Morrow as saying.
Property taxes in any new district would also be adjusted to make the rate consistent across the district. Some people’s property taxes would go down, some would go up, depending on the rate they currently pay to the local school district based on their property’s assessed valuation.
However, none of this is going to happen very soon. Given the approval processes needed for such a merger, the earliest ballot on which voters could consider the question would be November 2014. If approved, the new district could be operational by, at the earliest, July 2016.
Editorial
There are a few respected, long-term educators I have worked with who believe the entire country should be served by about 65 school districts: one for each state and then, maybe, the 15 biggest metropolitan areas. That’s a pipe dream, I know, but from a national or state-level perspective, having to deal with more than 800 school districts, which is what Illinois has, is a practical impossibility. For example, with different spring break schedules, how can a state possibly coordinate statewide testing, except by implementing a wide window? And UT High School started on Aug. 5, while many schools in the state won’t start for another week or two.
But there’s a fear of the unknown in rural Illinois, where small K-8 districts have been run by a separate board and superintendent for a long time. In many cases, the districts have a single school, or perhaps one elementary and one middle school. Letting go of that fine grain of control isn’t easy for communities or for school leaders.
The ultimate question, though, is not how to overcome that fear, but rather, how to best serve the educational interests of students. If students in Silvis really are very different from those in Colona, keeping them separate might be wise. However, they’re going to be on the same playing field by the time they get to the one high school anyway, so another point of view would say it’s worth getting them ready through common leadership by a single board and superintendent.
The upside of consolidating small rural districts in Illinois was discussed above, as reported from the public forum last week. As I see it, here’s part of the downside:
- Communities suffer when a school, even a middle school, closes—not just in Chicago, but anywhere
- If schools close, students could be burdened with transportation issues to schools farther away
- An increase in breadth of the curriculum doesn’t necessarily lead to greater student performance
As far as that last one is concerned, some studies have found that intangible forces in the community, such as the micropolitical forces common in many smaller Illinois towns, prevent the broader curriculum from having much of an effect on actual student achievement.
As a merger is considered, these possible drawbacks must be taken into account, and if a merger occurs, they must be addressed, especially the last one. Ensuring that the broader curriculum Mr Morrow promised does lead to greater student achievement could push up the new district’s per-pupil expenditures and nullify some of that financial stability a consolidation would seem to offer. I think more research is needed in this case before the community can cast an educated vote on the matter, and some of that research must be the district’s answers to how it will ensure better student performance going forward, whatever the decision is about the merger.
