A REGION DIVIDED: New math for schools

Could 31 districts ever equal 1?

Mergers a tough sell in parochial Cuyahoga County

It takes 31 independent districts to educate Cuyahoga County's 189,000 public school students.

That means 31 bus systems to get those students to school each day, and 31 food-service systems to feed them once they are there.

That also means teachers and other workers toil under 31 contracts bargained by 31 union locals and approved by 31 school boards.

And it means the salaries of those teachers and other workers are contained in 31 budgets overseen by 31 treasurers.

Not every metropolitan area operates this way.

Hillsborough County, Fla., for instance, has about the same number of students as Cuyahoga County but uses a dramatically different structure to educate them.

The district, which includes Tampa, has one superintendent, one school board, one bus fleet and one food-service system. It has one salary scale for teachers and one budget.

Cuyahoga County spends an average of more than $11,000 to educate a student.

Hillsborough County spends a little more than $7,000.

But don't expect Cuyahoga County to change its ways anytime soon. While critics say Ohio's crazy-quilt patchwork of 612 school districts 120 of them with fewer than 1,000 students is a model of inefficiency, there is little political will to consolidate the system.

When he was a state legislator in the 1970s, the late U.S. Rep. Donald Pease of Oberlin tried to pass a law requiring Ohio districts to have no fewer than 25,000 students. He failed.

Twenty years later, former State Sen. Eugene Watts tried to force a discussion of providing incentives for small, rural districts to consolidate. Watts got nowhere.

"It was a fight I couldn't win," Watts recalled. "Very few people wanted to even talk about it. For the General Assembly, it was in the same category as the cat-licensing bill."

Today, Senate Minority Leader Gregory DiDonato is one of the few lawmakers willing to broach the subject of consolidating administrative services. The Democrat from Tuscarawas County said Ohio simply cannot afford its current public school system.

"I think we can produce a better product more efficiently," he said.

Most data seem to support that contention. A 1998 study by the Columbus-based Buckeye Institute found Ohio top-heavy with administrators, having only 21 classroom teachers for every district-level administrator. The finding placed Ohio second among the 50 states in bureaucratic bloat. Only North Dakota had a worse teacher-to-administrator ratio.

"One might argue that Ohio is paying the price for its relatively large number of districts compared with other states that have fewer," the study states.

Ohio also divides its 1.7 million students into smaller districts than comparable states. Michigan, for example, has about the same number of students, but only 55 districts, averaging 3,100 students. Indiana's 239 districts average nearly 4,200 students. Ohio's 612 districts average about 2,800 students.

And that's just an average. Ohio's tiniest districts, such as College Corner Local in Preble County (261 students), Vanlue Local in Hancock County (320 students) and Bettsville Local in Seneca County (361 students), are dwarfed by the state's largest high schools.

In Cuyahoga County alone, one-third of the districts are smaller than Lakewood High School (2,500 students) and Mentor High School (2,375 students).

Unlike Ohio, some states have offered financial incentives for their smallest districts to merge. Nebraska, for example, has cut its number of districts in half, and Illinois pared nearly 1,000 districts by several hundred.

Money drove mergers in all three states.

"You have some savings on transportation, administration and pupil services costs, and you get greater bargaining and buying power," said Bruce Hunter of the American Association of School Administrators in Arlington, Va.

But it is money, ironically, that is responsible for the failure of consolidation drives in Ohio. Because Ohio depends more than most states on local property tax dollars to pay for education, politicians aren't eager to tell the homeowners who are picking up the tab that they will have less of a say in how their schools are run.

"If you don't have local control, how can you have local funding?" asked George Richard, former school board president of the 1,800-pupil Fairview Park district.

Budget woes

might spur mergers

But the money issue cuts both ways, and the dependence on local taxes could actually accelerate talk of consolidation. Next month, 106 districts statewide will ask voters to approve tax increases. Districts that have repeatedly had those requests rejected will eventually be unable to operate and could face pressure to merge with wealthier districts.

To many, local control is less about money and more about independence. When it comes to education, many Ohioans hold a deep distrust for mandates from Columbus.

Nostalgia also can play a strong role: Parents want their children to attend the school they attended and play on the same football team they played on.

"It's the whole concept that the community is the school district and the school district is the community," said State Board of Education member Martha Wise of Avon.

To others, the term "local control" like the term "states' rights" before it has come to mean something entirely different. To them, the plethora of local districts helps maintain the racially segregated housing patterns that produce racially segregated schools.

It is a structure that allows the Cuyahoga Heights School District, which is 98 percent white, to operate just 13 miles from the East Cleveland School District, which is 99 percent black.

"Yes, I believe in it," East Cleveland schools Superintendent Elvin Jones said of the idea of regionalizing schools during an April symposium commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling. "Why shouldn't I believe in it? It would help East Cleveland tremendously."

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© 2004 The Plain Dealer. Used with permission.