At the stroke of midnight last night, four local school districts that have existed for decades ceased to exist, and one new combined K-12 district arose like the phoenix from their ashes.
Will student performance change? Not immediately, and certainly not because the name of their school district changes. But three of those four districts were dysfunctional ratholes; I've been told to "never dare worse", but I doubt if this new district could be worse than those it replaces. And if nothing else it'll take time for the new district to become as bad as the old ones were.
Three elementary districts and one 7-12 district merged.
Full disclosure: I spent kindergarten to half of 6th grade in one of those K-6 districts, and grades 8-12 in the high school district. I taught 4 years in the high school district, working alongside some of the people who had taught me. The elementary district I attended was the only one of the four that was worth anything.
Unfortunately, consolidation doesn't always help the disadvantaged. The Charleston County School District is a perfect example. Once all schools in the county were in one district, the tax base was used to improve the suburbs and the consolidated school board over the last 30 years gutted education in the downtown areas--where most of the poor lived at the time.
ReplyDeleteCan't happen here so much, as local property taxes don't fund schools--the state does. School districts can try to get levies passed for bond, but that's usually for some kind of construction.
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