School District Consolidation on the Table?
Interesting ... so state legislators are now concerned with a 5 minute drive along San Antonio freeways that cut through seven school districts? Maybe they'll do as "good" a job on that as they did on re-redistricting ... or maybe they'll learn the same lesson Scott Hochberg learned 12 years ago (not 15 as the article reports).
School consolidation put on the table
Web Posted: 12/01/2005 12:00 AM CST
Gary Scharrer
Express-News Austin BureauAUSTIN ? State lawmakers will consider touching the political hot potato of school consolidation as they study ways to improve public education before a June 1 deadline imposed last week by state Supreme Court justices.
The House Public Education Committee decided Wednesday to look at school consolidation and nine other issues affecting public education.
Texas is carved into 1,031 independent school districts ranging from 211,499 students in Houston to 10 students in Kerr County's Divide School District.
Talk of merging school districts always triggers emotions, as Rep. Scott Hochberg, D-Houston, found out when he filed a school consolidation bill in his first term 15 years ago.
"I learned about death threats," he said.
But a Texas Supreme Court ruling declaring the state's public school funding system unconstitutional obligates lawmakers to make significant changes, the House panel's chairman, Rep. Kent Grusendorf, R-Arlington, said.
He cited several court observations sympathetic to school consolidation, including one from Justice Nathan Hecht contained in the 7-1 majority opinion.
"Districts are firmly entrenched and powerfully resistant to meaningful change, and while matters have improved somewhat over the past century, the number of school districts has not declined significantly in the past two decades," Hecht wrote.
"That's a pretty direct indication that we need to be talking about that issue," Grusendorf said of school consolidation.
Texas lawmakers are under court order to fix the school funding system by June 1. The court ruled that the school property tax has become a statewide property tax, which the state Constitution prohibits.
Rep. Harold Dutton, D-Houston, will chair a subcommittee to explore school district consolidation. He asked whether San Antonio needs 17 school districts, suggesting that a 15-minute drive on one of the city's major freeways "passes through seven school districts."
The number of San Antonio school districts cited by Dutton is inflated, Northside School District board member Katie Reed said later, because it includes three military school districts functioning more like private schools.
The Alamo Heights school district, with 4,400 students, remains Bexar County's only property wealthy school district.
"I think people like that would fight this (consolidation) issue tooth and nail," said Reed, who also is president of the Texas Association of School Boards.
Alamo Heights Superintendent Jerry Christian said school consolidation makes sense in limited situations, adding, "In general, making schools bigger and bigger and bigger is the worst thing we could do for education."
Smaller districts provide a more intimate education atmosphere for students and greater accountability for parents and taxpayers, he said.
Rural communities that lose their school district through consolidation often struggle and sometimes vanish, said Mary Ann Whiteker, president of the Texas Association of Mid-sized Schools.
Grusendorf's committee also will look at compensation packages for school administrators and the amount of money school districts spend on lawyers for litigation. More than 300 school districts joined in the lawsuit resulting in the court finding the school funding system unconstitutional. Legal fees reached $4.3 million.
"I don't think it's appropriate to use tax dollars to sue the taxpayers for more taxpayer money," Grusendorf said.