Merchantville.com

Which will it be? The town, the school, neither or both?
"People choose to live in a municipality for various reasons. Maybe it is the sociopolitical culture of the municipality. Maybe it is the appearance of the neighborhood they have chosen. Maybe it is the type or character of the school system. Maybe it is because of the quality of municipal services, such as good police protection or a quality library. Maybe it is because the type and price of housing they seek is in that municipality. Maybe it is because their family has lived in that municipality for a long time and there is a sense of tradition. Whatever the reasons, they have chosen this place as their home. In a democratic society, where change such as this is a matter of free choice, it should be up to the residents to decide if they wish to change their place of residence or merge their hometown with a neighboring municipality." http://bit.ly/96ADMn

Municipal and educational consolidations move on separate tracks and differ in important ways. One major difference is that towns may only consolidate after voters give approval, whereas the DOE simply ordered the school districts eliminated under a measure Corzine signed in June. The Christie administration is now backing away from attempts to consolidate and regionalize many of the state’s small school districts and will instead encourage the schools to share more services. The regionalization law, passed as part of property tax reform in 2007, required that county superintendents devise plans to merge any district that does not educate students from kindergarten through 12th grade. http://bit.ly/d49nmA

As a result of recent legislation on July 1, 2009, the State of NJ eliminated and merged 13 non-operating school districts.  Since the elimination and merger of the 13 non-operating school districts the user friendly budget and salary and benefit data shows the individual district budget information as presented to the voters prior to the elimination and merger. For further information and a listing of the impacted school districts click on this link: http://bit.ly/cBRTRh http://bit.ly/aqbt50. During Joint Committee member hearings about the regionalization law the statement “bigger is not always better” was echoed many times in response to the economies of scale that purported to accompany merged municipalities and perhaps save money for the affected residents. Many in favor felt that all municipalities had to do was consolidate their local governments and school districts and that the benefits of a larger municipality would bestow financial benefits on its residents forever.

During the hearings little heed was given to the testimony of Professor Yinger of Syracuse University who has studied school district consolidation for much of his career and Professor Slack from the University of Toronto, who has studied and participated in the Metro Toronto process over the past 30 years, spoke convincingly about the reasons why consolidation should not be used to save money. Professor Slack, warned the members that consolidation will not save any money and in reality it will probably cost more. If saving money their intent, she advised them to abandon the pursuit immediately. Professor Slack informed the committee that indeed there are apparent economies of scale achieved by consolidation. Duplication of effort can be eliminated. Specialization would increase efficiency. However, all of these benefits are lost as the result of the “harmonization of wages and services”. In other words, the effect of bringing together employees of different municipalities who have been compensated at varying levels but now work for the same entity doing the same job or bringing together service recipients of different jurisdictions who have received differing services levels. The wages always rise to that of the highest paid worker. and in a consolidated government those who have receive once per week garbage collection will not accept continuing once per week collection when other residents are receiving twice per week collection. Therefore, service levels for all municipalities rise to that of the highest level provided to any of the consolidated municipalities. In effect, the harmonization of wages and service eliminated any savings gained through achieving economies of scale and the overall costs often rose as the result of this effort.

On the subject of school merger professor Yinger testified that his study of the subject indicates that there is an optimal size for a school district, not an individual school and found that as the size of school district increased from less than 3,000 pupils, economies of scale improved. However, as the size of the school district exceeded 4,000 pupils, diseconomies of scale occurred. He therefore concluded that the optimal size of a school district was between 3,000 and 4,000 pupils. http://bit.ly/bQ0V2u

The policy response of the Joint Committee members to these experts was that legislators know that economies of scale work and they will work for local governments and school districts. Because their testimony did not meet their preconceived notions of efficiency, it appeared that the members ignored their warnings.

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