Paper On Closing School Districts

Let’s Close a Bunch of School Districts! First, an assertion: the smaller the school district, the more expensive it is to run. Consider this data, from the OSPI website: the five most expensive school districts per pupil in Washington State. District Benge Washtucna Queets-Clearwater Glenwood Keller

FTE 6.39 47.61 29.55 60.87 36.00

Expenditures 289,740 1,850,971 1,017,843 1,933,071 1,065,260

Cost Per Pupil 45,342.75 38,877.79 34,444.77 31,757.37 29,590.54

You have to go down to #25 (Oakesdale) before you find a district with more than 100 kids. In the top 100 school districts by per pupil cost, there’s only 2 (Seattle and Clover Park) with more than 1,000 kids. There are 295 school districts in Washington. 145 of them have more than 1,000 kids. (Fun fact #1: Benge is in Adams County!) (Fun fact #2: A year at Oregon Episcopal School, one of the premier schools in the Northwest, is $36,870 for boarding students. We could close the district, send the kids to boarding school, and still save $50,000 a year.) Consider, too, that in 1900 there were 2,710 school districts in Washington State. Many of them disappeared as their towns did (Mondovi, Hatton, Cunningham, Toroda). Some consolidated to become larger school districts; Mead, for example, is an amalgamation of 6 smaller K-8 school districts that decided they wanted their own high school. Other districts consolidated to save themselves; Edwall with Reardan and Hartline with Coulee are local examples. The most recent school district in the state to disappear was Vader, in south Lewis County. Their schools was condemned, they couldn’t pass a bond, and now they’re a part of Castle Rock. But closing isn’t just for small districts. What if…..we consolidated the Valley? District

Students

Total Spending

Per Student

Central Valley East Valley (Spokane) West Valley (Spokane)

11,895.54 4,120.75 3,562.46

97,679,484 36,441,522 31,767,147

8,211.44 8,843.42 8,917.19

Total Savings:

Savings at CVs Rate $2,604,241 $2,514,229 $5,118,469

Strictly by the numbers, then, since East Valley and West Valley are more expensive per pupil than Central Valley is, there would be money saved if their per pupil spending was at CV’s rate. At 19,578 kids, they still

wouldn’t be one of the 10 largest districts in Washington State. CV teachers can be a little odd, but I think the EV and WV people would adjust. Understand that this is a classic theory v. reality argument; the vicissitudes of bussing, administration, and special education expenses could certainly lower that projected savings number, though it could also make it higher. Other advantages to having less school districts: *Less school board and school bond elections. *More buying power for things like health insurance, etc. The larger the group, the more wide spread the risk. Similarly, health insurance pooling would be impacted. *Less duplication of existing services. Instead of three district websites, one. Instead of three gifted programs, one. Instead of three different people in charge of Skyward, one. *Makes it a lot easier on the union presidents. No, really. *Removes the artificial boundaries that divide adjoining districts. Where I live near Airway Heights, for example, the west side of the street which is closer to the town of Reardan is part of the Medical Lake School District, while the east side of the street (which is closer to Airway Heights, which is the Cheney School District) is actually in Reardan. Other opportunities present themselves. It may have made sense at one time for Great Northern to be its own school district, when the roads were mostly impassible, but the rise of Sunset Elementary and the automated snowplow sort of makes Great Northern a relic. In the Seattle area you have districts like Shoreline where the dividing line isn’t a bridge, a river, or a county line, but rather what side of the Avenue you live on. Why? In Thurston County there’s Rochester, which fails levies for fun and doesn’t really have a town to call it’s own. Carve it up into the surrounding districts and call it good. Given the state of the state budget we have to look at every option, even the nuclear ones.