One district works

January 22, 2007 07:26 pm

— Kentucky has one of the nation’s more complicated public school systems, according to the recent series called School Choice-Tough Choice that concludes in today’s issue on pages D-1-2.
It is comprised of 120 county districts, most of them rural, but also including the unified city-county systems in Louisville and Lexington, the largest cities in the state.
Integrated into 40 of the counties are 55 independent school districts, which are mainly located in the state’s smaller cities such as Raceland and Russell in Greenup County.
There are more than 660,000 students enrolled in the state’s public schools, but the numbers are uneven across the state, putting pressure on many schools to grow their student bodies, cut programs and teachers or merge with adjacent districts.
Historically, the independent school districts offered a wider variety of more academically rigorous courses than rural, county districts.
The major reasons offered in support of merging school districts is to save money over time and to improve the quality of schools through shared resources, including buildings.
However, there is a downside to merging: independent districts, located mostly in smaller cities, historically have higher local taxes. Independent school systems effectively cause taxpayers to pay twice for an education. And sometimes a school district’s savings are not sufficient enough to justify a consolidation.
Here in Rowan County, the school district runs very efficiently as a single, unified system. There is no extra tax burden on Rowan County taxpayers. Another advantage is that as a larger district, local teachers have more grant money available to them for technology and other programs.
And there is little doubt that Rowan County students receive the quality educational opportunities that independent school advocates say can only be had in a smaller district.