Willing to talk?

EAST LIVERPOOL - An East Liverpool school board member floated a proposal last week to at least talk about merging some school districts within the county.

Dick Wolf used his time during board table comments to suggest it's "time for us to shed our infantile, emotional attachment to a school district and talk about what is truly essential comprehensive education at the lowest possible price."

Robert Estell, president of the East Liverpool Board of Education, supported Wolf's contention that more could be accomplished by districts combining resources and shedding administrative positions.

"It is something we should be looking into," board President Robert Estell said.

"I am surprised that, at this point, no one has gone through the effort to put those two school districts together," Estell said concerning Wellsville and Southern Local.

"Quite frankly, I thought that, by now, East Liverpool and Beaver Local would be one school district," Estell noted. "I'm shocked that, to this day, that we aren't."

Estell admitted it would be a tough row to hoe.

There was no formal vote on the matter, but Wolf and Estell said they would contact some board members and administrators in other districts just to see if there was a possibility of consolidation or at least the sharing of some resources.

Fellow school board member Janice Martin was quiet at last week's board meeting. However, she recently said that she's confused by Wolf's recent actions, saying it was contradictory.

"How could a board member want to block the demolition of one school building but say we need to get rid of an entire school district?" Martin asked rhetorically. "Is it (consolidation) going to be done? I don't think so. We (East Liverpool Schools) are downsizing with these budget cuts and dealing with what we have."

Martin said she's been quiet at board meetings but has not been pleased with what Wolf and others have been saying.

On several occasions during the board meeting, Wolf referred to other districts in the county as "cornfield" schools.

"Those other schools are doing the best they can just like we are and are working hard to offer what they can," he said.

Wolf said some districts are unable to offer advanced or specialized classes due to low enrollment. Martin said high school students can now gain college credit courses and advanced classes and have other methods to get an advanced education while in high school.

"If a statewide movement was going to happen, perhaps it would work, but I don't see that happening," Martin said about consolidation.

The state is simply broke and unable to build new schools for consolidation, Martin added.

Several other districts officials shared Martin's view, and a few others seemed open to at least discussing the issue.

Beaver Local Superintendent Sandra DiBacco said mergers are difficult to do, and there is a lot of good, bad and ugly to school consolidation issues.

DiBacco felt that, in the case of consolidating with area districts like East Liverpool, the bad outweighed the good.

Several phone calls to Beaver Local school board members, including board President Keith Meredith, were not returned.

Wellsville weighs in

By JO ANN BOBBY-GILBERT

jgilbert@reviewonline.com

WELLSVILLE - The superintendent of Wellsville schools weighed in Thursday on East Liverpool school board member Richard Wolf's recent comments about the need to consolidate the county's 11 school districts into three.

In his remarks, Wolf said smaller districts cannot offer advanced placement courses or foreign languages, among other services, but that is not always the case, these superintendents said.

Taxpayers in the respective districts also may not favor merging, they emphasized.

In the Wellsville Local School District, consolidation was discussed many years ago during the early days of the funding equity inadequacy battle, according to Superintendent Rich Bereschik, who said it was suggested at that time that Wellsville and Southern Local unite for financial reasons.

A Southern resident himself, Bereschik said the district at that time had just experienced failure of a high-millage levy but residents then reinstated the levy in order to keep the schools open.

"I think that shows the willingness of schools to keep their own identity," Bereschik said.

And, while the truth is most small school systems do not offer advanced placement courses, according to Bereschik, Wellsville does offer post-secondary enrollment options, beginning as early as the freshman year.

The "Sophomores to Seniors" course, offered in conjunction with Kent State University, allows juniors to take college level courses, and the district does have students taking advantage of that offering, he said.

Credit flexibility being encouraged at the state level will also be incorporated in the district, offering students additional post secondary opportunities.

"We send a lot of kids to college and encourage all students to take the ACT and seek post secondary work, whether two years or four years. We put a lot of students directly into college," Bereschik said.

As for Wolf's assertion that students in other districts are not offered foreign languages, Bereschik disagreed, noting Wellsville offers four years of Spanish and three years of French to its students.

"That's pretty unusual for a small school," he said.

Admitting that much will be determined by the budget in the next biennium, Bereschik admitted, "For a district like mine to suffer a 10 percent cut will be pretty devastating," and said it may come to a point in the next five to 10 years as an issue of "consolidation by starvation."

But, he added, "This is a local issue and Wellsville board of education and I believe Southern feels the same way, they will run their own business and do what is best for their students."

A call to Southern Superintendent James Herring was not returned.

Northern districts share concerns

By MATTHEW SCHOMER

Special to The Review

HANOVERTON - Regarding consolidation or merger of districts, RuthAnn Rinto, superintendent of United Local Schools, said such a plan would be very impractical.

"It wouldn't be fair to the people that choose to live in a particular school district and want their kids to go to that specific school," she said.

She also questioned whether any data suggests students at larger school districts perform better than students in the current system set up in the county.

In Columbiana, Superintendent Don Mook acknowledged Wolf's idea has merit. However, he noted an idea is not the same thing as a well-laid-out plan, and he said there are too many questions still on his mind before he can support such a motion.

Those questions include what buildings would and could accommodate the number of students who would be in a single school under such a system, which current school districts would be incorporated into each of the three new ones, how students would be bused across the county, who would serve as administrator for the new districts and what would happen to sports rivalries.

Noting Columbiana's students have been performing very well on state tests, he questioned whether a new system would call for fewer teachers, as such a move would lead to larger class sizes. He also noted teachers typically live in or near the school districts in which they teach and said if some were laid off, it would adversely affect the local economy.

While Wolf's idea is intended to cut down on administrative costs, Mook noted some larger districts have positions unheard of in this county. For instance, he noted Boardman schools have a business manager.

He also questioned whether a "super-sized high school" would require an assistant principal or more than one principal and whether it could make its way with a single guidance counselor.

"You have to have a really solid plan to make that happen," he reiterated.

Instead of offering verbal support to a three-district-county system, Lisbon Superintendent Don Thompson said he is fully behind consolidating educational services in the county, such as those offered by the County Educational Service Center and the County Career and Technical Center.

"Any time you can share services with school districts is an advantageous situation," he said.

Several superintendents were curious as to how a three-school-district county would manage its finances.

Rinto noted the level of financial support received from the state - the largest source of financial support for Ohio's public schools - would likely change if school districts were to be combined. She noted while each new school district would have only one superintendent, she assumed each superintendent would need support from assistant superintendents to handle the sheer size of their facilities, faculties and students.

"I don't see where the savings is," she commented.

Thompson noted school districts rely heavily on property taxes to operate, and each school district has its own tax base. Changing that base could affect tax rates across the county.

Even if all school district leaders in the county were to support Wolf's plan, it would not be simple to set up such a system, several superintendents noted.

Thompson noted the decision would have to be handed down from state agencies, which he did not think was likely to happen.

"You can't just point at another state and say, 'This is how they're doing it.' You have to start with the state," Mook seemed to agree, noting the importance of state funding in the operation of school districts.

He also noted community support would be necessary for setting up a new system. Districts in which residents are happy with the state of their schools, as he feels Columbiana is, would not be very likely to support changing the system.

"There's a lot of pride in every one of the communities in this county," he added.

Leetonia Superintendent Rob Mehno declined to weigh in on the issue, saying if Leetonia were to consider it, the Board of Education would make the decision.

"Our focus right now is Leetonia," he said.

East Palestine Superintendent Tom Inchak was out of the office when called for comment when called Thursday afternoon.

Crestview questions move

By DEANNE JOHNSON

Special to The Review

NEW WATERFORD - While it may make some sense financially to some, Crestview Superintendent John Dilling said Thursday he can see more questions than positive answers to the idea of merging the county's schools.

Dilling questions just how much could be saved. Through the Educational Service Center, the school districts in Columbiana County are already saving some money for those services for which they do not need full-time staff.

State funding is based on staff levels. He said there would still have to be a number of students per teacher and other staff per building.

He questions how it would work with, for instance, Crestview, having a 1 percent income tax it relies on, while other districts have higher property tax levels to cover their expenses.

Former Crestview board member Becky Esterly studied the idea of merging the county schools together, when it was proposed by the Youngstown Chamber of Commerce a couple of years ago.

She asked a lot of questions and spoke to other schools which had looked at the idea before. From the research gathered by those in Dayton, who had looked at the idea of merging some schools in that area, she learned their research showed it would not save any money. She also looked at some states with large school districts, like Florida, where there is one large district per county with many smaller schools. Esterly said in many cases there are a lot of control and oversight problems with bigger schools.

"It was so huge, they couldn't keep a grasp on everything," Esterly said.

To her, the idea of merging the schools does not make a lot of sense during a time when larger school districts, like Youngstown, used the Bill Gates Foundation less than a decade ago to find ways to break their schools into smaller entities. For instance, when the school has 1,000 students and three administrators, each are assigned one third of the students, who the administrator then follows throughout their high school years.

Esterly points out such a big district becomes more of "big business." Instead of hands-on superintendents, she feels those making the proposals believe the superintendents are more an oversight person, not involved in the day-to-day operations, and they hire other people to handle those. That just adds to layers of bureaucracy with a superintendent, assistant superintendents and directors overseeing different areas of the curriculum.

In one specific case from her research, Esterly said in the end a merged district ended up with more administrators than before.

There is also the personal touch provided by Dilling and other superintendents of small schools. He tries to speak to as many community members as possible. People in the community know him, know the board members and know who to call if there are issues.

"Bigger is not always better," he said.

In a smaller school, students have more chances to participate in athletics, student leadership and organizations. In a larger school, only the best rise to the top and develop.

Both Dilling and Esterly talked about an experiment conducted a few years ago by Guidance Counselor Elwood Woolman in conjunction with the Boardman Schools. The two schools exchanged a group of students for the day and then the students got back together another day to talk about the differences in their schools.

Dilling said while Crestview students remarked about how many class offerings there were, they also talked about feeling lost among the large crowds and long hallways in the larger district.

"Boardman students were amazed at how close-knit we were," Esterly said, adding when students walk down the hallway at Crestview all the teachers know their names and asked them questions. "They liked that for the day."

Both Esterly and Dilling also questioned what happens to all the school boards in a merger situation.

Esterly said in larger districts, like in Florida, there is one board, and instead of paying them about $1,500 per year like at Crestview, the board members are full-time and make $45,000 per year - another instance that does not register a savings.

Dilling points out that Crestview is already a merged district of Fairfield and Waterford Schools. Some people in the community told him when those district's merged it was "the worst day of their lives."

For the merger to happen, Dilling said the state would have to approve it and at this time, the state does not appear in a hurry to push for mergers.

In the end, Dilling said, it comes down to the students and what is best for them.