County Boards of Education have faced criticism from constituents and state education leaders for refusing to make difficult, unpopular decisions. Often, those decisions have involved whether or not to close and consolidate schools as districts face mounting costs and declining student populations and revenue.
Last week in Taylor County, tensions ran high at the suggestion that the board begin to review a proposal to close Flemington Elementary School. The board rejected an impact statement to begin exploring options going forward.
That scene has become familiar at school board meetings around the state as parents and community members fight for their local schools, which are often the centerpiece of their communities.
Since 2011, 140 schools have closed in West Virginia. Hundreds more closed in a prior wave of consolidation between 1990 and 2002. Despite promises that school closures would provide more savings and advanced educational opportunities, West Virginia is still facing the same public education funding problems it did 40 years ago.
There are new data that demonstrate school consolidations may not provide the savings they promise.
A study led by an assistant professor at Stanford University focused on school closures across California between 2011 and 2019. The California study found that the consolidations ended up being a financial wash. Per-pupil expenditures were reduced by approximately $440 each, but per-pupil revenues also decreased by $440.
The study also found that school closures resulted in a loss of enrollment of 287 students in the five years following the consolidation.
Research presented at the annual conference of the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness in Baltimore examined Arkansas’s commitment to make public education more efficient by merging its 350 school districts, many of them small rural districts. University of Arkansas researchers concluded there were no overall savings from consolidation, in the short term or the long term. While the consolidated districts did save on administrative costs, the study showed transportation costs increased as well as costs for instructional staff.
Like West Virginia, Arkansas has experienced a decline in birthrates over the last two decades and, along with that, a decline in K-12 enrollment. And like West Virginia, Arkansas’s school funding formula is based on the number of students.
While school boards are required to prepare impact statements on the anticipated cost savings of consolidation, there is no comprehensive study to show the actual savings realized.
The West Virginia School Building Authority has generally incentivized consolidation indirectly through capital funding, and its statutory mission is to finance facilities in an “efficient and economical” way. Its grants are awarded based on both facility need and efficient use of resources.
Now, a new framework for a revamped school-aid formula would include an efficiency penalty to deter school systems from keeping buildings open beyond a reasonable measure.
School closures do not have to be an inevitability. However, state lawmakers must do what local school boards have been criticized for not doing: make tough and even unpopular decisions to rework the school-aid formula to reflect today’s educational and economic realities, giving small rural schools a chance and fulfilling the state’s constitutional obligation of providing a “thorough and efficient system of free schools.”