David Rhone, a former Pennsylvania school business officer and author of a book on school finance, suggests shrinking the number of Pennsylvania districts from 501 to 67 – one per county. He makes his case in an essay in an online news service for the Chambersburg area,
I have no philosophical problem with countywide units of local governance. But Rhone’s confidence that consolidation will save tax money strikes me as politically naïve. He gives reasons why consolidation ought to save money, and I don’t question his logic. I just doubt that the savings he expects will materialize. In fact, without more transparency on board-union contracts, consolidation might well make matters worse.
Several of Rhone’s suggestions – like bulk purchasing and cross-district health trusts – are sensible (and can occur now). It’s even possible that some of the administrative savings he expects might materialize. But the notion that creating larger administrative units will significantly reduce the actual number of administrators runs counter to experience. It won’t help that some superintendents becomes “assistant superintendents” if everybody involved expects raises.
Rhone addresses the single largest school cost item (about half of every district budget) in one sentence: “Teacher compensation and benefits would be standardized over the county.” That sentence undercuts his main thesis. Does anyone believe that salaries will be “standardized” at any level lower than the highest then prevailing in the county?
Suppose, for the sake of the argument, that hoped-for administrative cost savings materialize — say, at 20% of current cost levels. (Higher savings are easy to imagine and describe in detail, but so are unicorns.) That would be 20% of about 10% of most budgets – or 2% of a district’s total budget. Good, but I’d guess that “standardization” would also boost average instructional staff salaries and benefits by at least 5%. (Rhone acknowledges that consolidation is unlikely to reduce union political power.) That’d be 5% of 50% of most district’s budgets — about 2.5% of total costs.
Frankly, I doubt that real-world expenses would come even this close to a wash. Salaries and benefits at state agencies and “intermediate units” hardly suggest to me that negotiators for larger entities will do any better than smaller local boards now do — as long as everyone bargains behind closed doors. I don’t know exactly how much PSEA collects annually in dues, but it must be around $70 million. And that doesn’t count the urban AFT affiliates. Even if I’m off by several millions, that kind of money buys a lot influence in Harrisburg.
Does this mean that county-wide school districts (or other plans for district consolidations) are a bad idea? Not at all. But as long as school board directors at any level can negotiate contracts in secret and rush them to vote without any chance for public comment, it hardly matters whether dubious deals for taxpayers are negotiated piecemeal by guys like me or by boards who can cut similarly dubious deals on a larger scale.
