Merging schools, diverging views

Some question state's push to unite struggling districts

MONTAGUE - For Mary Kociela, the schools in this quiet town nestled along the Connecticut River are more than a place for children to learn. They are the center of her community.

She met her best friends through the parent teacher organization. As her son and daughter went through school, teachers called not just when her children were struggling but to tell her when they'd done particularly well. When her daughter's swim team won a division championship, the town's fire and police departments met the team bus on its way back to school and escorted it through town with sirens blaring.

Now, Kociela fears the personal touches of a small, locally controlled school district could disappear. With money short in this district of 1,100 students, state officials are pushing the Gill Montague Regional School District to consider merging with its neighbors in Franklin County, many of which are also small and struggling financially.

"A school is a huge part of a community," said Kociela, who has sat on the School Committee for eight years. "How do you maintain the flavor of each district? When I think about regionalization, I just think something's got to be lost in the process."

As state aid lags and local taxpayers turn down property tax overrides for education, Massachusetts education officials are pushing small school districts across the state that are foundering to consider merging with others. Districts that merge can centralize services and save on administrative costs, allowing the schools to "plow those savings back into new programs," said Paul Reville, chairman of the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, who will become education secretary in July. "It's something the state should be looking at in a systematic way."

State officials say that hundreds of small districts in Massachusetts could benefit from mergers with neighbors to form regional school districts; all but 41 of the state's 391 school districts serve fewer than 5,000 students, a number Reville said would create economies of scale without creating too much bureaucracy.

But in a state where the tradition of locally controlled schools is older than the nation itself, the idea is facing resistance from those who fear larger districts could disrupt everything from municipal finances, which are closely tied to school budgets, to local football rivalries.

"I just don't trust it," said Christine Bates, a mother of six who has two children in Gill Montague schools. "They might start with consolidating the administration, but what's to say they won't take another step and close our schools? It's one foot in the door."

While many states define school districts by counties or other regional designations, towns in Massachusetts have long fought to retain control of their schools, even as enrollments have declined and funds have decreased. The towns of Chatham and Harwich on Cape Cod have been talking on and off about merging since 1954 but have never reached an agreement. The town of Carver seceded from a regional district in 1993. And officials in Bridgewater have been debating leaving the district that they share with Raynham.

In Montague's Franklin County, elected officials and education leaders have been studying merging 18 school districts for a year and a half. But in Gill Montague, which has served two towns and three villages since 1981, residents fear that further regionalization could result in the loss of small schools, longer bus rides for children, and the loss of the traditional high school rivalries.

"What about the Greenfield-Turners Falls football game?" asked Gill Montague School Committee member Timmie Smith, referring to the annual Thanksgiving Day tilt between the two teams.

Officials in Gill Montague say they've exhausted other means of saving money and streamlining operations. School leadership has been reorganized, the district has joined the state's group health insurance commission, and an elementary school will close next month. Like many districts, Gill Montague already takes part in local consortiums that collectively purchase fuel and put out bids for large-ticket items such as school buses. But state officials say that while such collaboratives provide savings, they don't always enable school systems to meet the increasingly varied needs of their students and staffs.

Larger, consolidated districts can afford to have staff dedicated to training teachers, applying for grants, and working individually with special education students and pupils for whom English is not a native language, state officials said. In small districts, such responsibilities often are given to administrators and teachers already overwhelmed with other duties. Sometimes, they simply fall by the wayside.

"I spend so much of my time doing budget and governance, there's not nearly enough time dedicated to educational improvement," said Gill Montague's interim superintendent, Kenneth Rocke.

The Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents, a professional group based in Lexington, is expected to issue a report on regionalization next month. Hadley Superintendent Nicholas Young, who is leading the study, declined to discuss specifics of the report but said there are many small school districts in the state that are operating efficiently and effectively as they are. He said that small districts can reap savings and expand educational opportunities by cooperating but that mergers can create unwieldy bureaucracies that end up costing more.

"The data is overwhelming that this isn't the way to go," said Young, who oversees a 650-student district. "In many instances, regionalization is less cost-effective."

In Franklin County, some simply wonder about the complexities of merging several different payroll systems, coordinating the transportation of students across 700 square miles, and balancing the needs of communities that have not worked together before. Regina Nash, superintendent of the 1,700-student Frontier Regional and Union 38 School Districts, said she worries about the inevitable build-up of bureaucracy that would occur if systems merge.

"It's an issue that will continue to be studied," she said. "But I don't think the answer is having one superintendent for all of Franklin County."

Tania deLuzuriaga can be reached at deluzuriaga@globe.com.