CAUTION: SCHOOLS MERGING AHEAD

School districts are like errant siblings. You beat them up, bawl them out, and shame them into good behavior - until an outsider comes along and starts coercing them. Then you put up your fists and say you'll defend them to the death.

These days, the outsider is Gov. Rendell, who wants to force consolidation of hundreds of school districts statewide. He believes that Pennsylvania's 501 school districts are too many, that consolidation would reduce administrative costs and taxes while enhancing academics through greater course offerings and extracurricular programs. His education press secretary, Michael Race, says that arguments against the plan are "excuses for inaction" and constitute an "us- against-them parochialism that doesn't serve anyone in Pennsylvania."

But isn't parochialism just a pejorative way of defining local control - and might not inaction be the wiser course when the cure is worse than the problem?

In 2006, the state's Legislative Budget and Finance Commission paid Standard & Poor's $236,573 to study the cost-effectiveness of consolidating Pennsylvania's school districts. Among its findings:

The optimum school district size for cost-effectiveness is 2,500-2,999 students.

There is "virtually no correlation" between size of enrollment and standardized test scores.

Consolidation would face "considerable opposition," involving such factors as socioeconomic and demographic differences between school districts, the potential for longer bus routes for schoolchildren, less local control, and "a loss of local identity due to different community cultures and traditions."

Despite these conclusions, the Rendell administration feels that consolidations "have to be done on a much broader scale," Race said. So its draft legislation (yet to be introduced) would mandate that every school district in Pennsylvania have at least 5,000 students. Of the 62 districts in Southeastern Pennsylvania, 34 have projected enrollments of fewer than 5,000 students in the 2011-12 school year. Under the proposal, they would be forced into shotgun marriages with other districts and require all-new school boards.

In these districts, where a two-block change in the bus route can pack a meeting room with angry parents, consolidation is sure to stir gale-force winds of protest from a coalition of school staff, school board members, parents, students, and yes, even taxpayers. If politics makes strange bedfellows, they're going to need an extra-large mattress for this horde.

Let's assume a merger model of two districts with different demographics.

New contracts would have to be negotiated with every union, whether it be for teachers, custodians, clerical staff, or bus drivers. Any union worth its dues will fight to bring every category of employee up to the pay and benefit level of the best existing contract - and that means more taxes.

One superintendent would lose his or her job, but both would have existing multiyear contracts still in force from their prior districts. So the "losing" superintendent would keep getting paid for the duration of his contract, even if he or she wasn't working.

Assuming that the No Child Left Behind Act is reauthorized by Congress, an academically proficient district being merged with another that had failed to make adequate yearly progress under the law could face intervention and eventual sanctions for its inherited, underperforming schools.

Merging districts would assume one another's debt and pension obligations, which could affect bond ratings and also spell higher taxes.

If the consequences of consolidations raise hackles, then Rendell's method for achieving the new school district alignment is sure to trigger outrage.

Whereas the prior school consolidation in Pennsylvania (from 2,700 to 501 districts) stretched over about 25 years last century, the governor is seeking to put this one in place in about 30 months.

The task seems mind-boggling: Under the proposed enabling legislation, leaders from both parties and branches of the General Assembly would appoint a 12-member study commission. It would have one year to hold 10 public hearings statewide and then approve up to two consolidation plans for General Assembly consideration. If no plan were endorsed by the commission, it would be sent back out to the hustings for 10 more public hearings and then directed to approve a proposal within six months.

Once the plan or plans got to the General Assembly, legislators would vote them up or down without amendment. That's right. Your elected representative could not modify the new districts' boundaries. Otherwise, Race said, consolidation could be "subject to death by a thousand cuts."

And if the General Assembly voted the plan down, then the State Board of Education could draw up the new districts itself.

So, first an appointed commission proposes - and then possibly an appointed board imposes - a measure that could affect 1.8 million schoolchildren and legions of parents, taxpayers, and interest groups across Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, our state legislators (with the exception of the 12 on the panel) would be reduced to political eunuchs. It's not my idea of democracy.

Napoleon Bonaparte said that a revolution is an idea that has found its bayonets. Ed Rendell has an idea, but let's hope he's several bayonets short of a revolution.

FORCED TO COMBINE?

Rendell's draft plan would require school districts with fewer than 5,000 students

to consolidate. Area districts at risk and their projected 2011-12 enrollment:

Bucks County

Bristol Borough 1,271

Morrisville 728

New Hope-Solebury 1,671

Palisades 1,809

Chester County

Great Valley 4,255

Kennett Consolid. 4,398

Octorara Area 2,782

Oxford Area 4,164

Phoenixville Area 3,200

Twin Valley 3,782

Unionville-

Chadds Ford 4,219

Delaware County

Chester Upland 2,765

Chichester 3,359

Interboro 3,561

Marple Newtown 3,434

Penn-Delco 3,497

Radnor Township 3,628

Rose Tree-Media 3,631

Southeast Delco 4,100

Springfield 3,505

Wallingford-

Swarthmore 3,437

Montgomery County

Colonial 4,991

Upper Dublin 4,150

Upper Merion 3,907

Upper Moreland 2,936

Upper Perkiomen 3,344

Wissahickon 4,364

Cheltenham 4,105

Hatboro-Horsham 4,893

Jenkintown 538

Lower Moreland 2,476

Pottsgrove 3,259

Pottstown 3,102

Springfield 2,116

SOURCE: Enrollment Projections, Pa. Dept of Education, 2009