Small Town News

Lets not make the same mistakes again with consolidation

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GOTTA LOVE IT

"Never base your budget requests on realistic assumptions, as this could lead to a decrease in your funding."

- Scott Adams (Dilbert)

"God made the idiot for practice, and then he made the school board."

- Mark Twain

A columnist will always have a topic as long as there are legislators and school boards. Our two stories this week have their origins in Dover, our beloved state capital and home to a cast of characters straight out of Monty Python.

Whenever our legislature is in session it's a given that political discourse that strains credibility and begs the question, "Do they really think we are that gullible" will set the voters scratching their heads.

First up, the Delaware Economic and Financial Advisory Council has increased its state revenue estimates for the current fiscal year by $78 million, and the estimates for the fiscal year which begins July 1 by about $77 million. Since the state's coffers have been financially challenged for the last 36 months or so, this is welcome news.

You'd expect that having faced lean times, our feckless representatives and senators would breathe a collective sigh of relief, bank the extra revenue for a rainy day or pay down debt and continue to find ways to streamline and make government less costly and more productive.

That's what a typical Delaware family would do. Our elected officials, however, immediately began looking at ways to spend the newly found money faster than sailors on leave after a yearlong voyage.

Proposals to restore cuts and increase funding immediately followed the DEFAC report. It's this type of lunacy that got us into a budget crunch. It begs consideration that if the governor and legislators thought the cuts they imposed when funds were tight would still allow government to function, why is it okay to turn back those hard-won reforms simply on the basis of what may very well be a onetime revenue bump.

The funding challenges of the past several years forced our elected leadership to closely examine the use of tax dollars and reallocate resources while ensuring government services will continue to be provided.

It's foolish to toss all of that hard work and effort to streamline government aside. Lack of savings and planning caught government and families off guard during the recent recession. Let's not make the same mistakes again.

On another front, last week, news came of two bills that tackle the realignment of Delaware's school districts. One bill, from Senate President Pro Tem Anthony DeLuca, would consolidate the three technical school districts into a single statewide district beginning in the 2012-13 school years.

A second from Sen. Michael Katz would establish a nine-member council to "study" consolidating the 19 existing districts into five.

Why take action on the tech schools, but only study the others?

A good bet is that the savvy DeLuca understands that unifying the tech districts has less political downside since the tech boards are appointed by the governor and not elected, thereby avoiding the moaning expected from the elected school boards and other stakeholders about loss of local control.

As proof, witness the comments from Cape Henlopen' s Camilla Conlon and Spencer Brittingham cited by Leah Hoe-nen in her article in last Friday's Cape Gazette.

Conlon claims salaries in a consolidated district would need to be leveled up. This is a red herring; businesses merge all the time and don't level up. Many instances exist in private industry of dual-pay systems surviving a merger, with new hires having their own pay system with the differences working themselves out over time.

All of this should be on the table as consolidation is evaluated, as should merging the tech schools into the newly constituted districts instead of forming an overlay district statewide.

Brittingham bemoans the plight of a superintendent being unable to attend all of the events in a larger district. Since when is attendance at every event at every school a job requirement? What if two schools have events at the same time? Cape administrators and board members don't even make attendance at school events a habit. This is another excuse without a logical basis.

Brittingham should also brush up on his math. He is quoted as saying Cape's nine schools when added to the Indian River schools would create a district with 14 schools, a burdensome sum, he supposes.

Trouble is, when you combine the 15 from Indian River with Capes' nine the total would be 24 schools

Will consolidation work? You do the math.





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