By Ed Bednarczyk
Buffalo, NY – Recently, WBFO aired a commentary by Dan Lenard where he advocated "regionalization" of school districts. In many ways, it reminded me of the urban legends that most of us have had passed along to us via e-mail.
You know the ones, revenge on Neiman Marcus for allegedly charging so much for their cookie recipe, or that forwarding an e-mail to everyone in your address book will get you a $1,000 pay-off from Bill Gates because Microsoft needs help testing an e-mail tracking program.
Now, these sound believable, but a quick check of the facts leaves you feeling that you just should have known better. These educational Urban legends are just as persistent, making the rounds every few years after discussion of the facts fades from memory.
Let me take this opportunity to shed some facts on some of the urban legends surrounding education.
Education Urban Legend Number One: Bigger is better. I am amazed at the concept that building a bigger bureaucracy will make things work more efficiently. If this were the case, the areas largest system, the Buffalo City Schools, would be the model to which all area districts would look. If this were the case, the city of Los Angeles wouldn't be considering splitting into smaller districts, and the city of Chicago wouldn't be implementing a school within a school model - designed to give students and teachers a smaller setting.
If bigger is better, why are we looking to charter schools, typically smaller, and in a perfect world, more innovative and efficient, as a solution to the challenges facing education? Moreover, if bigger is better, why stop at county wide regionalization, why not have a single state run, or even federal system like many other countries of the world? In part, it's because we recognize that issues of local control aside, bigger does not necessarily translate into better
Education Urban Legend Number Two: Consolidation of services will save buckets of money. Now this is one that I really wish were true. Unfortunately even if we eliminated most of the superintendents in the area by merging districts, their salaries would a) honestly be a tiny fraction of total education spending, and more importantly b) their work would still need to be done, and that this would require hiring ADDITIONAL administrators, although admittedly at a somewhat lower rate of pay.
Let me present an interesting, little known fact: at least two studies have been commissioned in the Town of Cheektowaga looking at the cost benefit of merging districts. These studies found little or no savings as a result of merging. Now admittedly, these studies did not consider a county wide merger, but the fact remains that the cost savings you would hope for just weren't there. Before we declare the potential savings perhaps we should do the simple math STUDY that would examine the real bottom line.
Education Urban Legend Number Three: There is no cooperation between are districts. School districts have been looking for ways to work together to save money for decades. The most notable example is centralized purchasing through the local Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) for many products. In Cheektowaga, the FOUR districts hold regular joint meetings to deal with common problems and look to ways to share services. Numerous other examples of regional cooperation and collaboration can be found through a link at the Erie Country Association of School Boards web site www.ecasb.org - just click on the Regional Collaboration Button.
Unfortunately, the challenges facing education are complex and won't be solved by a single silver bullet be it regionalization, vouchers, standards or even mandate relief. To believe otherwise is to believe that Bill Gates is going to send you thousands of dollars, just for forwarding that message to everyone in your address book.
Listener-commentator Ed Bednarczyk is president of the Cheektowaga-Sloan Board of Education.