Without question, the proponents of consolidation steadfastly assert how utterly and completely fool-proof the economics and financials support their position. They claim that it is without question, irrefutable, that consolidation — in no matter what instance and no matter how structured– saves money. Indeed, consolidation derives its benefits through the inviolable principle of ‘economies of scale’. So it’s quite interesting to read the story in the Recorderhere where a proposed consolidation of the school districts falls through:
Final tallies for the election, of which HFM BOCES District Superintendent Patrick Michel had oversight, showed St. Johnsvilleresidents approving the merger, 461 votes to 79. O-E residents voted against the merger, 458 to 400.
I’m intrigued at how this could be as is it not a universal truth that consolidation saves money and hence, “protects taxpayers”? After all, don’t the opinion pages of the very Recorder endorse candidates and platforms with consolidation as their mantra– as the end all and be all to what ails our city? As a city, we need to consolidate and share services without question, we are told — from the media, from the pundits and from elected officials. Not to pick just on the Recorder, but the Leader Herald joins the bandwagon too via this editorial on the merger:
. A combined district would bring many changes – the most important of which would be an improvement in students’ education. The new district would provide more programs and opportunities at a reasonable local cost. This should be a prime consideration for voters.
Hmmm, I’m intrigued why Oppenheim-Ephratah countered their wishes. Here’s the table from the report:
You see kids, consolidation saves money but not to O-E, it saves money to St Johnsville. So there is a different set of incentives amongst the parties.
Hmmm, that’s curious, I thought consolidation saved money to everyone, everywhere, everytime?! You know what else is curious — the financial incentives surrounding the savings to consolidation of the districts from the state. In other words, a set of financial incentives to consolidation are actually provided from the state, or let’s put it like this: it is financed by districts outside the consolidated districts who receive the incentives. So other districts incur the cost of consolidation as they are funding the various incentives.
Hmm, that’s kind of interesting too — what is the net-net of the incentives: is it an aggregate reduction of taxes or an aggregate redistribution of taxes that makes it looks like we’re “protecting taxpayers” when we’re really not.
I could ramp up the snark here but let me highlight the point of my post — consolidation is a tactic, not a strategy. So merely viewing each challenge through the eyes of of economies of scale, shared services, whatever does not automatically yield universally better outcomes for all parties. Consolidation may reduce costs but distribute who wins and loses differently. Or, consolidation may not yield the expected reduction in costs because, as the Bacon closure vividly highlights, the assumptions put into the business case were flawed. Or, consolidation may be fundamentally unsound due to the economic and governing structure of the consolidated entity, like MOSA.
I still have to question, at its very core, why we view delivering quality education services as something that needs economies of scale when technology vividly demonstrates that it can fundamentally disrupt the quality, the delivery and the cost of education several orders of magnitude beyond anything imagined by consolidation approaches.
Or why we continue to fund schools through a property tax mechanism put in place under a very different economic and political time hardly relevant to today’s economies.
Or why we brush aside that the rise in education costs largely comes from the higher cost of health and pension benefits and rather than address the core problem on health care costs as a systemic issue, we believe that we can fix the problem by consolidation of buildings and transporting students to and fro. Oh right, if we discuss health care reform, you are a socialist or a death panel advocate; I forgot, we can’t have that conversation at all.
At its core, consolidation is a tactic that may make sense under certain scenarios. But, I’d argue, in many other scenarios it simply cannot deliver the wished-for results.
Meanwhile we’ll continue with a set of policies and incentives that will put us further and further back from getting to the real issues but we’ll have a meme to believe in.
