Youngstown Daily Legal News

Geauga County school consolidation would be first in Ohio in 25 years

TIFFANY L. PARKS
Special to the Legal News
Published: April 11, 2014

A Chagrin Falls lawmaker has introduced a bill into the Ohio General Assembly that would create a loan program for a newly consolidated school district to receive up to $10 million for a new facility.

“This legislation is narrowly crafted to address a very specific set of circumstances surrounding the potential consolidation of two school districts in Geauga County,” said Rep. Matt Lynch of House Bill 447.

The proposal, which is before the House Education committee, would permit a city, local or exempted village school district resulting from the consolidation of two or more school districts to apply to the Ohio School Facilities Commission for a loan of up to $10 million for the purpose of constructing a new classroom facility.

In sponsor testimony for the bill, Lynch, a Republican, offered background on the Berkshire and Newbury school districts.

“These two communities are demographically similar and have always had very close ties to each other,” he said, adding that as the area’s population has dipped, it’s become “harder and harder to make the case for two separate districts.”

“So, they began holding numerous meetings with the respective boards of education, the teacher’s unions and many other local stakeholders.”

Lynch said the districts ultimately decided to consolidate.

“They have even gone so far as to consider asking the Ohio High School Athletic Association if it would be possible to merge their football teams immediately, which, as we all know, can be an obstacle in consolidations,” he said.

While noting that it is “regrettable” that population shifts have made the proposed consolidation ideal, Lynch said both communities support the idea overall.

“Local board of education members in each district have actively campaigned on the need for consolidation and have been re-elected. The student attendance numbers also bear out the need for a consolidated district,” he said.

According to data from the Ohio Department of Education, the Newbury school district has 551 students and Berkshire has 991.

“That means that even if they merge, the new district will average fewer than 120 students per grade. With the population loss in the area, the number of students in each district will continue to shrink and, at some point, these districts will be hard pressed to survive individually,” Lynch said.

“That ... brings us to HB 447.”

Lynch said if the citizens in both districts vote in favor of consolidation, there will be a “pressing need” to sort out the facilities for the new district.

“Both districts currently have high school buildings that date to before 1940,” he said. “Part of the financial drain of operating two separate districts comes from these old buildings, which need extensive maintenance, are not energy (efficient) and require otherwise redundant servicing.”

Lynch said OSFC has done a study of the facility needs of a potential consolidated district and concluded that the new district is looking at about a $50 million building effort.

“While the districts are ranked as having high property values, it is an area that is very land rich, cash poor, with many older citizens on fixed incomes,” he said.

“It would be a tough haul for them to get a large bond issue passed while they are consolidating, as it would occur during a time at which the taxes for the district will be in flux because of the rate-setting mechanism for consolidated districts. In many ways, the facilities issue is the last major question mark in moving forward on Ohio’s first school district consolidation in 25 years.”

To be eligible for a loan proposed under HB 447, each of the respective consolidating districts must have had fewer than 1,700 students K-12, be located in a county with a population of fewer than 100,000, and neither district can have received OSFC money up to that point.

“The last criterion is especially important I think, as there has been a concern about the pace of the OSFC building program,” Lynch said.

“According to my office’s analysis, there would be at most 18-22 potential groupings of school districts that could be eligible in addition to the Newbury-Berkshire effort. None of this means that it is likely that we will see any of these consolidations, but we did try to calculate how many other potential matches were out there to make sure we weren’t accidentally creating a giant spending program.”

Lynch went on to stress that the initiative would be a loan program, not a grant program.

“The districts must work with OSFC to conduct a study and prove that there would be enough savings to pay back the loan as a precondition to receiving the money,” he said.

“Even with this program passed, I don’t believe we will see a rush to consolidate by other districts, there is a good reason why this would be the first successful effort in 25 years.”

Lynch said the state’s school district consolidation process is rightfully rigorous and extensive.

“The potential Berkshire-Newbury consolidation is an effort that was conceived at the local level, HB 447 simply adds a small tool to their toolbox as they move through the process.”

HB 447 is co-sponsored by Republican Reps. John Adams, John Patterson, Kristina Roegner, Robert Sprague, Gerald Stebelton and Andrew Thompson.

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