Bill would force small school districts to consolidate

State Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, D-Norwalk. State Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, D-Norwalk. Photo: Tyler Sizemore / Staff Photographer Photo: Tyler Sizemore / Staff Photographer Image 1 of / 9 Caption Close Bill would force small school districts to consolidate 1 / 9 Back to Gallery

School districts with fewer than 2,000 students would be required to join other districts to regionalize populations and save money on administrative costs, under legislation submitted by state Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, D-Norwalk.

Duff’s proposal got early support Friday from Gov. Ned Lamont

Duff said if the bill passes, those districts not cooperating with nearby towns within five years could lose state Educational Cost Sharing funding.

An expert on state education funding said Friday that towns can definitely save administrative costs by combining their student populations, and some data indicate that at the high school level, larger schools can offer more-enriching educational experiences.

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“Fifty percent of our school districts have fewer than 2,000 students, so that gives a lot of money to bureaucracy rather than the students in the classroom,” Duff said in a Friday interview. “Dollars are tight and these small school districts are very duplicitous and so my opinion is they should be consolidated into larger districts. If these communities don’t want to consolidate they shouldn’t be eligible for ECS or other state aid. We have to make the most of our resources.”

Duff’s co-sponsor of the legislation is Sen. Cathy Osten, D-Sprague, who is co-chairman of the budget-setting Appropriations Committee.

Lamont said Friday that the consolidation of some school districts makes sense. “I think we should take a look at it,” he said during a morning news conference in the state Capitol announcing a nominee to run the state Department of Administrative Services.

“I’m going to look at all these proposals,” he said. “We spend more money outside of the classroom than in the classroom, given the nature of the many small school systems we have in the state. And I’m going to do what I can to stretch our hard-earned taxpayer dollars a lot further. Shared services — a lot of that is going to start right at DAS — as well as regionalizing many things in education, is going to be a big part of that solution over time.”

Katie Roy, executive director of the Connecticut School Finance Project, said in an interview Friday that the issue of school consolidation has gained a higher profile in recent years, so last summer, the non-profit looked at academic research going back 20 years.

She said while economic journals find true financial savings can result from school districts joining populations, academic outcomes are less conclusive.

“There is disagreement over the ideal size, but all are in agreement that fewer than 2,000 students are not economically efficient,” Roy said. “Resources are spread across too few students.”

The academic side of the issue is more complicated. “There are findings that particularly at the high school level, district consolidation allows a more rich academic curriculum,” she said. “For smaller districts it’s hard to offer a broad variety of courses. High schools with only a couple hundred kids find it hard to find a diverse faculty. There are advantages of schools coming together to offer variety of diversity. The big picture take away is consolidation should lead to lower administrative costs and at an minimum have no academic impacts, and at the high school level could have positive impacts.”

A related bill, filed by Senate President Pro Tempore Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven, was apparently taken as a threat by William S. McKersie, Weston’s superintendent of schools.

In a message to parents, McKersie, whose salary in recent years exceeded $193,000, said the legislation was “premature and requires in-depth analysis prior to being formally considered.” He said the proposal “would undermine the effectiveness of the school districts” forced to participate. “Simply put, we have to be both efficient and effective with all public resources, but a wholesale leap to regionalization at this time is not only unwise, but imprudent and would likely undermine our high-quality system.”

Staff writers Emilie Munson and Jordan Fenster contributed to this report