Rendell proposes consolidating 400 school districts

Philly Inquirer:

Gov. Rendell wants to slash the number of school districts statewide, eliminating about 400 of the current 501 Pennsylvania public school systems.

The controversial proposal would make a more efficient public education system, he said.

"There is nothing sacrosanct about the need to maintain 500 separate school districts across the state - each with its own staggering, and growing, administrative costs," the governor said in his budget address.

Rendell wants a legislative committee to study consolidation and return recommendations within a year.

This plan is a mixed bag: while it helps better distribute property taxes between urban (poor) and suburban (rich) districts, it consolidates the organizational structure from top to bottom. What we should be fighting for is the centralization of funding and the decentralization of decision-making. Having bigger districts means there's less wiggle room for democracy and experimentation; it also means the trend to create mega-super-ultra-huge schools will only accelerate. While yes, that will mean having to pay fewer Principals, it'll also bring with it enormous class sizes and teacher/student disempowerment. Any hope for a humane public school system rests on very small class sizes as a foundation.