Monday, April 25, 2011

Jeff Gerritt: Working together for students -- two UP districts show challenges and benefits of consolidation - Detroit Free Press

Wakefield, Mich. -- The Wakefield-Marenisco School District, tucked in the wilderness of the western Upper Peninsula, spreads over 500 square miles. It took me 13 hours to travel the 600 miles from my downtown Detroit condo to the three-

story brick schoolhouse on U.S.-2 that serves the district's 280 students.

The schoolhouse entrance is unlocked and unattended. Inside, no metal detectors greet a visitor, only gleaming floors and hallways lined with framed graduating class photos, many showing fewer than a dozen students. Faded black-and-white photos go back nearly a century.

All but four of the school's students are white. At first, this 100-year-old schoolhouse might seem like another planet. But in a world collapsed by the Internet and MTV, it really isn't. In one sixth-grade class, for example, students talked about watching eagle's nests and bears. Still, when I asked high school students about their favorite rappers, I found they listened to the same artists -- Lil' Wayne, Eminem, Young Jeezy -- that students anywhere in America do.

Michiganders will almost certainly hear more about this tiny school district, which consolidated in 2004. Facing a budget crisis, politicians are considering merging some of the state's 550 school districts to save money and increase efficiencies. Up until last year, when two Adrian-area districts agreed to merge, Wakefield-Marenisco was probably the only district in Michigan to consolidate in nearly 25 years.

By all accounts, the consolidation worked, saving the shrinking 50-student Marenisco district and reducing overall costs. After the two districts merged, Marenisco closed its school and sent its students to Wakefield, 13 miles to the west, and the Wakefield Cardinals became the Wakefield-Marenisco Cardinals. Roughly 95% of the new district's students graduate. MEAP scores have remained slightly above the state average.

Still, the consolidation was not without pain. Six teachers lost their jobs when the interim school board didn't rehire them. The merger also tore up both districts' teachers' contracts and forced concessions on health care benefits. Some Marenisco students had to ride the bus for 35 miles. Nor will this consolidation, or any other, erase Michigan's school budget crisis.

With an annual budget of $2.5million and a fund balance of $450,000, Wakefield-Marenisco is arguably the healthiest district in the western U.P., partly due to consolidation. Even so, with the drastic cuts in per-pupil aid proposed by Gov. Rick Snyder, the district's general fund will sink to an estimated $137,000 deficit by next year.

"Consolidation is not a panacea," said Catherine Shamion, the district's part-time superintendent who also teaches a high school French class and last year supervised a kindergarten lunch period. "Bigger isn't necessarily better."

Neither is smaller.

With fewer than 1,800 residents, Marenisco Township covers more than 300 square miles. The region's population had dropped for decades, as copper mines and saw mills closed and young people left for better opportunities. Eight years ago, the Marenisco School District was dying. In 1999, the district enrolled nearly 120 students, compared with 50 just before the merger.

With many lakeside vacation properties and a solid tax base, the Marenisco district could have survived before Proposal A in 1994, but it could not continue under a per-pupil funding system.

"We had some graduating classes with three or four students -- and an elementary class with one student," said Richard Bouvette, the former Marenisco superintendent and first superintendent of the consolidated Wakefield-Marenisco district. Marenisco had also considered consolidating with the Bessemer and Watersmeet districts. But Wakefield was closest, and the two schools already had a joint football team. Enrollment in the Wakefield district -- about 280 just before consolidation -- was also falling, from 900 students during the 1970s.

"There was not a lot of controversy in Wakefield," said Larry Kapugia, the district's superintendent until the merger. "We knew we had a declining enrollment."

In separate elections, both districts approved the consolidation -- by roughly 10-1 margins. In 2004, Wakefield and Marenisco merged under an interim school board appointed by the local intermediate school district -- four members from Wakefield and three from Marenisco.

"In terms of fiscal management, it was a good thing," said Bouvette, now a Marenisco Township supervisor. "On the other hand, Marenisco lost its school and identity."

Teacher and staff also lost their contract and, temporarily, their seniority rights.

"The interim school board treated both the Wakefield and Marenisco staff members like peasants," high school social studies teacher Jayne Miller told me outside her classroom. "Consolidation can be very good, but, because of the way it was handled here, it's going to take a lot to get this staff to support and campaign for another one."

To build community support, any newly consolidated school district should start from scratch, said sixth-grade teacher Sue Geldon, who taught at Wakefield before the consolidation. "Let the students and community come together and choose the school name, mascot and colors."

For students, the strife ended quickly.

Senior Karly Dean, 18, of Marenisco, was one of six sixth-graders -- all girls -- coming to Wakefield from Marenisco in 2004. For the first few weeks, the Marenisco girls hung together, she said, but soon boys and girls from the two communities merged into one student body.

"Now we're all good friends," said senior Dakota Easley, 18. "In a small school, it's hard to have cliques."

An aspiring engineer, Easley takes advanced math in Bessemer, 5 miles away. Wakefield-Marenisco doesn't have enough students to offer the class.

It's one of the many ways Wakefield-Marenisco already cooperates, Shamion said, including sharing a technology support staff member with regional school districts and an industrial arts teacher with Bessemer. It also transports Bessemer students to a vocational program in Ironwood. Wakefield-Marenisco and Bessemer run a cooperative football program.

But sharing services and privatizing are not always practical. Wakefield-Marenisco's business manager, for example, also serves as the district's support staff supervisor, transportation director and food service supervisor. So sharing payroll and other business services would not enable Wakefield-Marenisco to reduce staff.

The district has already solicited bids for private bus services, but the nearest company, in Eagle River, Wis., couldn't do it for less. Same story with the district's food service, which makes a small profit by serving local day care centers.

Even so, with declining enrollments and revenues, efforts to consolidate the Wakefield-Marenisco, Bessemer and Ironwood Districts -- all within 14 miles along U.S.-2 -- will continue.

"It will be hard fought," Shamion said. "All three communities are proud of what they have."

JEFF GERRITT is a Free Press editorial writer. Contact him at gerritt@freepress.com or 313-222-6585.


View the original article here

No comments:

Post a Comment