(05-15-2013 10:01 AM)EA3 Wrote: (05-15-2013 09:56 AM)Broncobelt Wrote: ^Huge waste of money. The city of Wyoming alone (about 50K pop) has three distinct and separate school districts.
Maryland has the best schools in the country. School districts there are county wide. Michigan could learn something.
I like that model. My only worry is that a county like Kalamazoo or Kent would be extremely diverse. I'm not sure having one set of admin lead both Kalamazoo and Portage schools would work. They need different things. Or maybe it would be good.
Certainly would be interesting and save money.
I would think if you were looking at the Kzoo area you could do something along these lines. (again none of these schools would need to close to pull this off...but certainly a few likely would and would merge)
Merge Schoolcraft and Vicksburg Call it the Southern Kalamazoo County School District for example
Merge Otsego and Plainwell districts
Put Parchment and Comstock and Kzoo Public together.
Merge G-A and C-S
Merge Paw Paw and Mattawan
Merge Gobles and Bloomingdale
Merge Delton with Gull Lake
None of these districts in theory would need to layoff a teacher or close a building.
What I listed above is 15 separate districts currently, that I've merged into 7 new districts.
In just the greater Kzoo area alone, if assume you are removing a super making 125K, and some office staff that combine for say 75K. You have already saved $1.4 million in salary costs annually. That doesn't take into account benefits, and long term retirement pensions that will not be handed out. Do this throughout the state and you can see savings of 50-100 million a year is reasonable. Without touching classroom channeled money.