Report (pdf) - School Management Services

adequacy of their school facilities, and less bonded indebtedness. Largersized
school districts typically enjoy larger budgets, greater and more
diversified staffs, less teacher preparations, more expansive course
offerings, a greater array of services, more updated (but not necessarily
state-of-the-art) facilities, and a higher level of cost/effectiveness, but they
typically encounter, as well, higher tax rates, greater bonded indebtedness,
larger class sizes (though more cost/effective than their smaller district
counterparts), and much more.
One critical disadvantage experienced by low critical (student) mass school
districts (those smaller than the average size of school districts in the State)
is the lesser flexibility or capability of recovering from unanticipated
downturns, unplanned events, or conditions that could jeopardize the
organization’s long-term survival, such as high inflation, meager (or no)
increases in educational funding from the State level, increases in
unfunded mandates, enrollment decline through weakening birth rates, loss
of enrollment to other school districts, changes in local economic
conditions, statutory changes, unnatural calamity (fire), or the like. As an
example, an enrollment drop of 40 students in two school districts—one of
200 students and the other of 2,000 students—represents a problem of the
same magnitude (loss of 40 students each) but one of dramatically different
proportionate magnitude (20% compared to 2% loss of students). In the
former case, the loss of students could very well be devastating to the
existence of the school district, while in the latter case, the loss of students
is a challenging problem, but it is one which can be dealt with as a part of a
standard budget reduction process. Indeed, district size is a crucial
variable for any school district to consider in planning its future options. The
Project Consultants note the importance of the district size variable to the
© Roger Worner Associates, Inc.
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