Small School Consolidation? Senate Bill 514

   This blog is an update of the school consolidation piece I touched on last week. Senate Bill 514 was signed by the governor last Thursday, which now means it is law. The original SB 514 was designed to force schools with less than 500 students to consolidate with other schools. The new and improved version of SB 514, which now becomes law - is slightly different. How different from the original forced consolidation bill remains to be seen. For the new consolidation law, a "task force" is appointed by different entities (House and Senate leadership,the State Department of Education, the State Superintendent, and the governor) to study school consolidation over the next year and make recommendations for consolidation. There is no evidence that any of the appointing officials are NOT biased toward school consolidation, as all have previously stated that school consolidation should take place, regardless of any study. There is no evidence that any of the 12 appointed members will be unbiased as they study school consolidation and no evidence that any of the task-force members will even know how to conduct a study. There is no requirement that any school official with less than 500 students will be appointed to the task force (only one member who is a superintendent for a school district with less than 1000 students).
   The task force could recommend the closure of all schools with less than 500 students, as Senator Stanislawski originally intended. The consolidation of schools still could be forced, just taking more time to get there. We must pay attention to the task force selection at this point...