By Gene Meyer
February 8, 2010

(KansasReporter) TOPEKA, Kan. - Consolidating the smallest of Kansas' approximately 293 school districts potentially would save taxpayers at least $18 million and perhaps as much as $138 million, Kansas legislative auditors reported Monday.

The difference depends on which of two possible consolidation choices taxpayers and educators made, Dan Bryan, of the Kansas Legislative Division of  Post Audit, told a legislative panel.

The more conservative of the two choices that researchers explored would be to simply hold Kansas school districts to minimal sizes that state legislators set in the early 1960s, when nearly 2,800 mostly rural districts were reduced to about 300, each with at least 400 students and sufficient geographic and tax bases to support an elementary through high school system of that size.

Kansas currently has 32 districts too small to reach those nearly 50-year-old standards, Bryan reported. Consolidating them with nearby districts would cut education costs across the state by $18 million, primarily by cutting 230 teachers and administrators from the districts' rolls and closing about 50 school buildings, he said.

The more sweeping of the two choices would be to redraw school boundaries across virtually the whole state so that about 152 surviving districts would have at least 1,600 students, which is the number that auditors found appear to be needed to use Kansas school funding support the most efficiently, Bryan said.

This more sweeping approach would save taxpayers $138 million, chiefly from eliminating 1,532 teaching and administrative positions that would become redundant and closing 304 school buildings across the state.

Post Audit Division auditors, who serve as a sort of state level version of the federal General Accounting Office, weren't recommending either of these choices, but just outlining them for consideration as lawmakers weigh policy dilemmas that potential consolidations create, Bryan said.

Neither of the two choices outlined Monday, for example, treat all potentially affected districts equally; school districts as a group would be financially stronger, but some individually would lose more in state aid than they gain in operating efficiencies, he said.

Statewide, some 19 small Kansas have merged with larger neighbors since the 2002, 2003 school year, the audit reported. At least two more merger proposals, between Claflin Unified School District 354 and Lorraine USD 328 near Great Bend and Hanston USD 228 and Pawnee Heights USD 496, in the Dodge City area, are scheduled to be reviewed at a Kansas State Board of Education meeting Tuesday.