Closing school to deal with the furlough order

long ago with THIS school board and its puppet handlers!  If you don't like the FYR discussions & comments sorry, they're not going away.

What would you like to talk about, reassignments?  Busing?  Teachers being let go?  All the kids that will be returned to where ever Chuck wants them to go thanks to making FYR schools legal?  Oh sorry, didn't mean to touch on that again, AC temps up a degree?  Coffee pots unplugged?  F&R #s?  Hiding test scores?  School board members?

My home district is in MI. As far as I know, there are no county-wide systems there and one county has 28 districts (which seems excessive). Total number of districts there is 552. The governmental structure there is very different than here. For example, townships play an important role. I'm guessing most people here have no idea what township they are in. There is ongoing debate there about whether they should consolidate school districts. I think there are cons to both extremes (one system per county especially one this large vs. 28 in one county), but I'm not big on extremes in general. I think happy medium is sometimes the better answer.

As for my county:

1) It's actually four districts for the calculation you are trying to do. The fifth district is an "intermediate" district that primarily provides early ed, special ed, adult ed, and CTE services for the county. The students in special ed and CTE are still considered students of their regular districts. 

2) It does not divide evenly. My home district has around 3,300 students.

3) Yes, each district has its own superintendent, but they do not make $300K. If I remember correctly from a recent news article, one of the other district superintendents makes around $80K and just voluntarily gave up his raise for the second year in a row due to the economic downturn. BTW - the average teacher salary in MI is higher than NC.

4) Sets of buses are multiple, but keep in mind with buses the more students you have to pick up, the more you need anyway. So, they have more "sets", but the sets are smaller and the buses that run are full. They have community schools and there are no YR or magnets. They do run split schedule. ES start later than MS/HS, so the bus drops off the MS/HS kids turns around and gets the ES kids. Last year, they basically stopped "in city limit" busing altogether when the gas prices went to $4.

5) The different districts contract with the same dining service to handle child nutrition services, so they do not have child nutrition departments. They also do not have, nor need, a PR department.

6) Tax burden is hard to say as it is in a different state and different states have different tax structures (as far as state income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, and other taxes) and different school funding structures. My district received about $3100 per student from local funding in 2006 compared to Wake's $3600. Wake also received more federal funding although it has a much lower ED rate, but my home district received more state funding, so overall funding difference was only 2%. My district spends about $500 more than here and it is in instructional spending. I'm guessing my home district gets less fed funds because although all the schools are Title I, none are failing. School district can levy, but it must be approved by voters. I am not aware of them having trouble passing millages. I know some think these are times of unprecedented challenges, but I remember 1980-1983 and my district was able to get a special millage passed then to make up for lost tax base even with unemployment well over 10%. I do think the districts history of sound fiscal management and focus on instructional spending is a factor in how successful they are in asking for funding both publicly and privately (private donor gave $6M towards building new ES). They also save some $ through use of volunteers from the community. I do think that appreciation for the symbiotic relationship between the schools and community is not as strong here and not just because of size difference, although there may be some exceptions on an individual school level. Overall, the level of community service there seems to be higher.

7) The viewpoint on education there is also different than here. They are very much focused on individual student needs. They do not label students "at-risk" based on only one factor about them. I'm not sure if it is because of the smaller size or other factors in the community or a combination of factors.

Personally, I think small districts can have inefficiencies if they do not manage them. For example, hiring a FT IT Director instead of having a HS teacher cover it when it can be covered on a PT basis. However, too large and it seems the KISS principle starts to get lost, the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing, the system starts to get complex, unwielding, impersonal and uncaring, and some people in it seem to start to get elitist instead of remembering they are in a public service function.

At this point though, the cow is already out of the barn here in NC and good luck trying to get her back in, even if that would have been the better place for her to be.

I lived in Ohio for almost 7 years in a district that had 14,000 students.In the same county there were  6 other school districts.Each is on their own.

To answer a question of yours-In addition, doesn't that mean you have five sets of buses, five child nutrition departments, five HR directors, five superintendents at superintendent salary,

Yes each of the districts has their own set of each but one big differnce is we one superintendent -Del Burns but since this district is so big it is actually subdivded into 7 smaller areas each having a local superintendent.The district I came from was made smaller.If one looks at the way Wake County is set up there are many big depertment heads but then each has many smaller depertment heads working under them-another example is transpotation.one area manager and 17 people working under her.It goes on and on like this.

City schools run differntly in Ohio then one big county district but in my opinion smaller is better.

The General Assembly will never allow that to happen.  They are trying to make the remaining 15 non-county systems consolidate as it is.  The NCGA wants one system per county.

Besides, for all the people who get on here and rail about bureaucratic waste, by all means let's create a new school system (or 2 or 3) and pay each one to have a superintendent and a central office and a transportation department and child nutrition and all those things that would be duplicated in a Cary-Apex school system.

You might try checking out one of those places that has a multiple-school system set-up and hear about the discrepancies in taxation and funding and achivement among the districts.  Many people in those places complain about their extra tax burden to maintain a separate entity:

http://www.the-dispatch.com/article/20080606/NEWS/806060311

They'll let us know the day after it happens!