CAC Done; Do You Feel Lucky?

The "Community Advisory Council" (or are we a Committee? I forget) had its final meeting last night, to look at the documents mentioned in the last couple of posts. My initial summary, as I said in the meeting, is that the "What If" program document suggests a economy-of-scale savings of $717,000 per year, while the "What If" transportation document suggests that in order to get the kids together for their economy of scale, we need to spend $642,000 extra per year on buses. That's a yearly savings of $75,000 out of $27,000,000 for the combined districts. Everything else we're talking about (millions of dollars in benefits) seems to be coming from the state incentives for merger -- incentives which mostly run out after fifteen years, even assuming that they don't stop earlier than promised.

Hmmm... Well, I would like to go a little further than that initial summary.

• The $717K savings looks pretty solid.
• The $642K extra cost is a pretty big gamble.
• I don't entirely trust the state benefits.
• There are also some genuine non-financial benefits to consolidation.
• I don't think they're as important as many think.
• I have another proposal. :-)

The -$717K program proposal strikes me as well-done; this is where our SES Study Group shows off the fact that they really do know what they're doing, putting together something credible and credibly saving a bunch of money at the same time. No criticism from me -- but I understand where some critics were coming from, having hoped that the program could have more in it.

The +$642K transportation proposal is understandable, and as they said they asked the local experts how to manage it and it probably can't be done much better though experience will improve it some. BUT -- As Susan Marafino said in the meeting, that $642K will rise if fuel costs rise: consolidation is a bet that they won't. As I said in response, fuel costs might not rise: natural gas prices have been falling and we are seeing increasing use of natural gas vehicles; on the map you'll see one station in Utica, three around Syracuse, three around Albany, one in Poughkeepsie...prices may fall. Or not. On the other hand, the past fifteen years have seen gas prices quadruple. On transportation cost, it comes down to this: Do you feel lucky?

Increasing transportation is a small gamble in another sense. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) says

An average of 24 school-age children die in school transportation-related traffic crashes each year (11 occupants of school transportation vehicles and 13 pedestrians).

That's not many; it's not one of the major risks of childhood, it's not even a major part of the risk of vehicular death in childhood. But it's a bigger risk than random shootings at school unless Sandy Hook is the new normal; if you're worried about school shooters, if you're worried about causes of death in general, you should worry about this a little more.

The transportation plan also involves another cost, which some will think small: as I said in the meeting, we'll have some hundreds of kids spending about an hour each day (two twenty-minute rides and maybe ten minutes waiting for each, morning and afternoon) which they do not now require. Kids from Hamilton will do this for three years, kids from Morrisville will do it for four. That's not a gamble, it's just a little sad. And boring. (But it's better than exciting...gee, I remember hanging on to the bus' door handle going home from my own elementary school, with one foot on the step and a couple more kids on the steps ahead of me...boring has a lot to be said for it.)

The state benefits are the big deal here; they don't just handle impacts like the first year of extra bus usage, they pay off millions of existing debt and provide other benefits. Do they? Well, maybe they do, before they come to an end and leave us, lucky or not. But there is a New York State Budget Crisis Task Force, and they seem to me to be saying that

the money available to the state may suddenly decrease, whether from renewed recession or from financial companies moving their operations to lower-tax regions; their incentives for doing so have risen.
... Aid to K-12 education is by far the biggest portion of state aid ($23 billion) and is the largest item in the state budget.

When you make big plans based on promises of future state aid, you are assuming that the state will be able to keep its promises. The state is in trouble, unprecedented trouble in some ways; that trouble is almost certain to get worse; that trouble might suddenly get much, much worse; K-12 aid is the biggest chunk; New York State K-12 education is more expensive than anybody else's (except Washington, D.C.?). If something's gotta give, it's likely to be us. Do you feel lucky?

Now, there are genuine non-financial advantages to consolidation. If you scroll down to the bottom of this page, you'll see a little Javascript widget about grade sizes that says

Here's a test of the importance of grade size, which is roughly doubled by a merger of equal schools. Suppose we have a grade of size gradeSize (say, 45) from which we want to select a Latin 4 class of at least 10; it won't be offered without 10....

I suggest that you put in your own guesses about grade sizes for HCS and M-ECS, now and fifteen years from now. Put in your own guesses about the percentages who'd like Latin 4, advanced chemistry, or jazz band. I believe you'll see that consolidation makes it easier to offer advanced courses, when schools require minimum enrollment the way ours do.

I also believe that minimum-enrollment policies will become less common in a world of the Khan Academy and Salman Khan's One World Schoolhouse, so I don't think grade size is as important as I would if I thought minimum-enrollment policy was a necessary part of school. (see footnote.) Still, the benefits of consolidation are, or might be, quite real -- but so are the costs, and consolidation is a gamble that the costs will not be too much higher than the benefits. Do you feel lucky?

I have another proposal. Last night, for the first time, I heard someone say that the M-ECS school could handle many more students; that it had handled many more students. The SES response was that it couldn't do so with the current usage pattern as defined by the Board, which is certainly fair enough. But suppose that this is true. If so, I would propose a different kind of merger, one which is probably politically impossible for excellent reasons, but still worth a thought. Leave every HCS student at HCS; close Andrews Elementary completely (this will save a whole lot of money, really), moving all those students a little ways north; now go to Hamilton with Morrisville's 12th grade, 11th grade, 10th grade...9th? Does it fit? It might...and the advanced classes can go on, even with minimum enrollment policies, and Morrisville students will be able to sign up for Colgate courses, and so on. Nobody loses, everybody wins...or not, depending on what they care about. And "what they care about" is important. Indeed, that's what it's all about...I don't think this will happen. But it's worth a thought.

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footnote on minimum enrollment policies: My own AP classes were mostly independents; I think I had two classmates in AP English, but my own high school (it was smaller then) wasn't a good candidate for consolidation. In any case, I don't think 10 is a good minimum class size; I think it's bigger than most study groups ought to be, even considering that I think most study groups should probably be virtual -- maybe two students physically present, with webcams and big screens to connect up a virtual table, and a responsible adult who is not a "teacher" present somewhere nearby, while tutors connect mainly online... but that's just one image among many possibilities. School is changing. Prediction is hard, especially of the future. My vision is almost certainly wrong. Consolidation commits you to a single vision. I'm skeptical.

footnote on district comparison: I've tried to collect some district comparison data at this blog's disorganized companion website as well as around here. It seems to me that consolidation commits you to having a single vision; you have to agree with people about what kind of lives your kids are likely to live (and then, of course, you have to support your kids with whatever they decide for themselves, which won't resemble your visions very closely.) That's hard. Of course you might find that you really do agree on priorities. Or not. Do you feel lucky?

March 12 Update on What's Next: As I understand it, the SES Study Team will now finish their write-up as a submission to New York State, which paid for the study and expects a document. Meanwhile, the Hamilton and Morrisville Boards of Education will be talking about it. Then it goes public, as they say here:

Adopting the merger is a three-step process.

• Boards vote to move the process to an advisory referendum or "straw vote."
• The communities hold a straw vote. If this passes, the results are sent to the education commissioner who authorizes a statutory or final referendum.
• The communities hold a final referendum.

(Or then again, maybe not.)