To call the budget ambitious in regard to the schools would be an understatement. The goal is to reduce the number of PA school districts from 501 to 100.
The plan's steps are outlined in the article as follows:
- General Assembly would have to approve creation of legislative commission
- Commission would have one year to produce two options to reorganize school districts, including optimal enrollment, new boundaries and implementation plan
- General Assembly would vote up or down on each plan
- If the General Assembly rejects both, law would give authority to the State Board of Education to proceed with consolidation
Clearly, the devil is in the details, but the idea is to cut administration by consolidating it, and this will lead to more money for classroom education.
I think I'd be alright with this in concept if it meant the existing district's integrity would remain as it related to geography and level. And that the building principals would have more ability to administer.
By this, I mean Nazareth HS, should receive students from the MS, the MS from current elementaries. And that students in Bushkill continue to attend bushkill and are not split between Bushkill and Moore Twp Elementary.
As time goes on, there may be some reasons to move students, but to start I think it would be too much.
What do you think?
1 comment:
I see this as actually a great idea in that we can get rid of a lot of useless administrator (hopefully those from Nazareth) when this consolidation occurs. Hopefully an 80% reduction in districts equates to roughly the same reduction in administrators, but realize there will have to be a few more than a normal district just because of their new size.
For us in Nazareth, this could be a blessing in disguise if this happens as the huge tax increases the NASD administrators were so kind to give us could potentially now be spread over a wider base of the newly formed districts, of course, provided which districts we end up merging with.
I do have to disagree about the comment of keeping kids in place. This has been done now and has proven to be a bit of a disaster. Case in point moving kids from Tatamy to LNES to balance the enrollment. When it went the other way, they never changed back, and of course you have siblings (can't move them no no no).
In the southern end of LNT, the homes are closer to East Hills MS and Freedom HS than they are NASD, so from a cost perspective (if we merged with BASD), move, don't wait, because everyone will continue to find an argument in the future as to why not to do it then.
We have problems with our schools, administrators are breaking the backs of the taxpayers, and for those of you who buy into the whole PSSA game, scores keep on dropping.
We can continue business as usual, or, make a bold step that could actually change the face of our education system and possible save the taxpayers of NASD a few dollars.
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