School Regionalization Bills Has Smaller Towns Concerned

School officials in towns such as North Branford, Guilford, Madison, East Haven, Branford - any town with less than 40,000 people - are keeping an eye on two new bills in Hartford that are calling on school regionalization to save the state money.

Senate President Martin Looney, D-New Haven, proposed a bill which would force school districts in towns with less than 40,000 residents to consolidate with a neighboring district.
Senate Bill 454 https://www.cga.ct.gov/2019/TOB/s/pdf/2019SB-00454-R00-SB.PDF
would force the regionalization of a large number of towns in the state, merging their school districts with larger municipalities or cities. Only 24 municipalities in Connecticut have a population over 40,000.

The law, if enacted, would become effective starting in July 2021.

Looney’s simple rational for his bill is: “to create a more efficient educational system.”

He is proposing the creation of a commission to develop a consolidation plan.

And Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff and fellow Sen, Cathy Osten, D-Sprague, have submitted a bill https://www.cga.ct.gov/2019/TOB/s/pdf/2019SB-00457-R00-SB.PDF
that would “require any school district with a student population of fewer than 2,000 students to join a new or an existing regional school district so that the total student population of such new or expanded regional school district is greater 2,000 students.”

Both bills have been referred to the legislature’s Education Committee and are very far from becoming law at this point, but the two bills have stirred up much debate already in the smaller towns that would be impacted if the proposals were ever enacted.

For instance, in North Branford, where there are two elementary schools, an intermediate school and a high school - and a population of slightly more than 14,000 and a total of approximately 1,900 students, the talk of regionalization came up at the most recent Town Council meeting.
North Branford has been discussing possible renovations to its aging school buildings.

“The Lamont administration has indicated that less than 2,000 students is not a viable district,” Councilman Alfred Rose said, according to the minutes of Jan. 22nd Town Council meeting. “We may be forced to merge with another school district - so we should consider this before we put money into rebuilds.”

Many towns in the state, including in nearby Madison, are dealing with the issue of declining student enrollment.

Madison is closing one of its elementary schools at the end of the current school year, which will leave the town operating with five instead of six schools. And right next door in Guilford, student enrollment declined about 70 students from 2017 to 2018, a trend that is continuing this school year.

From a bigger, statewide perspective, the largest lobbying group for small towns in the state, the Connecticut Council of Small Towns (COST), is wasting no time stating its opposition to both bills.
“Consolidation does not always produce cost savings,’ said Betsy Gara, executive director of COST.
“Several smaller school districts have explored consolidation options and concluded that consolidation would not result in significant cost savings,” Gara said. “Instead, consolidation raised concerns regarding whether the quality of education would suffer.”

“There are many reasons why consolidating small school districts may not be in the best interest of students, taxpayers and the community,” added Gara. “For example, many small school districts are located in rural areas where homes are spread out across a wide geographic area. For these students, forced consolidation may result in less time in the classroom and more time on the bus.”

Gara said the legislators should spend their time working on mandate relief if they really wanted to help towns save money instead of consolidation bills.

“Under the Minimum Budget Requirement (MBR) mandate, school districts must budget at least the same amount for education as they did in the prior fiscal year, with certain limited exceptions,” Gara said.

“The MBR mandate is holding town budgets hostage, imposing a tremendous burden on property taxpayers to fund unnecessary levels of education spending,” Gara added. “Towns need more flexibility to ensure that education budgets can be adjusted to reflect declining enrollment and other areas where savings can be achieved.”

Photo by Jack Kramer