Winslow, Decatur Top School Consolidation List

The state could save at least $712,044 per year by consolidating the two most inefficient school districts in Northwest Arkansas — Decatur and Winslow — with nearby districts.

But that figure could be 60 percent higher when a Supreme Court-ordered adequacy study is completed by Sept. 1, said Mary F. Hughes, associate professor of educational administration at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.

“That’s what [the savings would be] presently,” she said. “That doesn’t take into consideration what the adequacy study might project.”

Hughes and James E. Metzger, project director and adjunct faculty at Webster University in Little Rock, completed a study in February saying Arkansas could save $40 million per year by consolidating 117 of the state’s 310 school districts — the majority of the 183 districts that have fewer than 900 students. Decatur had 534 students last year. Winslow had 304. The study is online at www.webster.edu/littlerock/resources.html.

The plan would leave the state with 193 districts. Hughes notes that she and Metzger began their work a year ago, before the Supreme Court ruled in November that the education system had to be overhauled and before Gov. Mike Huckabee released his plan in January to close about two-thirds of the state’s high schools.

Hughes and Metzger’s $40 million savings, however, could be a drop in the bucket if the study indicates Arkansas needs to spend another $500 million to $1 billion per year to make education adequate for all 450,000 students in the state. Currently, Arkansas spends about $2.3 billion per year on education from kindergarten through the 12th grade.

Metzger, who is in the final stages of a companion study about how to finance consolidation, said the answer is taxes.

“We’re looking at a change in as many as six to 12 different taxes,” he said. “Spread that burden out and offset some of the hit for people who can afford it least.”

Long-Term Savings?

According to the Hughes/Metzger study, Northwest Arkansas has the three most efficient school districts in the state — Fayetteville, Springdale and Rogers, in that order.

Decatur and Winslow were the only two of the area’s 16 districts that should be consolidated, the study said. Based on a funding formula aimed at $4,722 per student (which is what the 48 most efficient districts averaged), closing Decatur schools would save $466,716 per year and closing Winslow schools would save $245,328 per year. Last year, the state spent $5,596 per student in Decatur and $5,529 in Winslow.

But Roger Ogé, the superintendent in Winslow, thinks the Hughes/Metzger plan is shortsighted.

“There was no consideration taken for poverty,” he said.

Ogé said 67 percent of the students at Winslow are on free or reduced-price meals for lunch, the highest rate in Washington County. He said studies show students who live in poverty do better academically in small schools and middle-class students do better in large schools.

Impoverished students could be neglected in large schools and end up dropping out. The state may end up paying for that later in the form of incarceration, Ogé said.

Ogé said consolidation doesn’t save money in the long run. The money that is saved from laying off a school principal or superintendent would be easily offset by raising teacher salaries at the larger schools and added transportation costs to bus students to the consolidated schools.

“Research plainly shows that overall consolidation hasn’t saved states money that have chosen to consolidate,” he said. “Of course, it is fairly expensive to educate students at some small schools. We’re 15 miles from the nearest schools [West Fork and Mountainburg].”

Despite its small size, Ogé noted that Winslow produced a National Merit Scholar in each of the last two years in addition to a Sturgis Fellow and Bodenhamer Fellow.

“We will put out ACT scores up against any school,” he said. “Because we’re small, they want to consolidate us, and the reason is rather convoluted. It’s a disservice to students from impoverished districts. You can just write BS on this one.

“We’re not limited to a bunch of sophisticated data coming out of Little Rock to tell us how a student is doing. We know how they’re doing.”

Huckabee Plan

In the wake of the state Supreme Court’s Lake View school funding decision in November, Huckabee came up with a plan to consolidate almost two-thirds of Arkansas’ high schools into 107-116 regional districts, with each district containing a minimum of 1,500 students (unless smaller districts meet specific standards).

Huckabee is talking about secondary schools only. Under his plan, no elementary school in the state would be closed. By contrast, the Hughes/Metzger plan calls for closing 117 entire school districts.

“When you close a high school, you kind of take the heart out of the community,” Ogé said.

The governor’s proposal calls for consolidation by July 1, 2004. The Supreme Court, which upheld the vast majority of Pulaski County Chancellor Collins Kilgore’s May 2001 ruling, gave the state until Jan. 1, 2004, to come up with solutions.

After some wrangling with superintendents and legislators at the 84th General Assembly, Huckabee’s plan is on hold until fall, when the Legislature will reconvene to review the study that will hopefully define what constitutes an adequate education in Arkansas.

The Supreme Court ordered the state to do the study by Sept. 1, and legislators hired a California-based company to work on it.

In addition to making schools more efficient financially, the governor’s plan is supposed to make them better academically, providing access to more courses and better facilities. The governor is also calling for a revamping of the state Department of Education.

“The governor’s plan clearly, eventually is probably what needs to happen,” said District 8 state Sen. Dave Bisbee, R-Rogers. But Bisbee said the governor’s plan will probably be changed before it’s passed by the Legislature.

“We have traditionally in Arkansas killed education reform by getting in a big fight about consolidation,” he said, noting that the Lake View school ruling said nothing about consolidation.

The problem with school districts being equal but not equitable, he said, hinges on students who are “starting farther behind” and need remedial assistance.

Bisbee, who is on the Senate education committee, said Huckabee’s plan would affect 30 percent of Arkansas’ students. Two-thirds of the state’s students are in school districts with an enrollment of more than 1,500.

Under the governor’s plan, besides Winslow and Decatur, the following Northwest Arkansas school districts (and total number of students) would also be slated for consolidation: Gravette (1,404), Elkins (947), Greenland (885), Lincoln (999), Prairie Grove (1,306), West Fork (1,055) Gentry (1,236) and Pea Ridge (1,105).

Bisbee said Gentry and Decatur, which are both in his Senate district, could be consolidated to form one school district with more than 1,500 students.

1,589 Districts

Although having 310 school districts sounds inefficient, it’s a far cry from the 1,589 districts Arkansas had in 1948 when every little town had its own school system.

The state cut the number of districts to 424 in 1949, limiting the minimum size of each district to 350 students, but the move wasn’t retroactive. Consolidation brought the number of districts to 369 in 1983 and 310 in 1998, although Arkansas had 56 school districts with fewer than 350 students in 2001.

The Hughes/Metzger study puts the minimum cutoff at 900 students, saying that’s an optimum size and that school districts that are too large are as inefficient as districts that are too small.

The number of students that constitute an efficient district has been a matter of debate for some time.

In 1978, a report called “Educational Equity: Improving School Finance in Arkansas” went to the Arkansas Joint Committee on Education saying districts should have 1,000-1,499 students (average daily attendance in educational jargon). The study said administrative costs were more efficient in districts with 1,500-4,499 students. In other words, the more students per school, the fewer administrators, but that brings about a whole different set of problems.

In 1990, another study said school districts with 600-1,600 students were the most efficient.

Hughes and Metzger have come up with numbers in between the two previous plans.

Statistical Breakdown

In 2000-2001, Arkansas had 444,978 students in 310 school districts with total spending for net current expenditures (excluding federal funds) of more than $2.3 billion. The average expenditure per student was $5,207. The school districts employed 23,982 full-time classified and 31,109 full-time certified personnel. The average salary for a teacher in K-12 was $34,729, and for a school district superintendent, it was $72,580.

School district enrollment ranged from 71 students in Witts Springs (Searcy County) to 23,444 in Little Rock (Pulaski County).

Of the 310 school districts, 196 had fewer than 1,000 students, representing 63 percent of the districts and 23 percent of the state total average daily membership.

To come up with a rating for each district in the state, Hughes and Metzger used 19 “operational measures” and nine “achievement measures.” In their study, 135 school districts were identified as inefficient and 175 as efficient.

“In general, the school districts identified as inefficient had high per pupil expenditures, low K-12 teacher salaries, low student-to-teacher ratios, low student-to-administration ratios, and below average test scores,” the Hughes/Metzger study stated.

On the chopping block are about a third of the state’s smallest school districts, particularly schools in eastern Arkansas. Ranking as the most inefficient were Arkansas City (Desha County), Crawfordsville (Crittenden County) and Lake View (Phillips County).

According to the Hughes/Metzger study, the 24 most inefficient districts in the state all have fewer than 900 students.