A legislative committee chairman has the right idea in trying to nudge Mississippi toward combining a number of school districts.
The state has too many instances where districts are too small to provide their students with a wide range of academic and extracurricular offerings. There are also places where adjacent school districts are on the opposite ends of the quality spectrum, with one district doing well, according to their students’ test scores, and the other one struggling.
House Education Committee Chairman Rob Roberson, however, has backed off on his initial plan to force the reduction of school districts in Mississippi from 138 to 82, or basically one per county. Instead, he is now advocating for the establishment of a task force to work with the state Department of Education to formulate a plan and identify those districts where consolidation is most needed.
Being more methodical about this is wise, but the thrust is still clear. Districts are rarely if ever going to voluntarily consolidate. Mergers have to be forced by the Legislature, which in recent history has generally only occurred when a district has been taken over by the state because of financial or academic disaster.
That’s what happened in Leflore County, when the Legislature mandated that the county district, which had been taken over due to academic and leadership failings, be merged with the Greenwood district in 2019.
The same happened in Roberson’s neck of the woods four years earlier, when Oktibbeha County was forced to merge with the Starkville district.
It’s worked in both places, although to a greater degree in Oktibbeha County than Leflore. The Starkville-Oktibbeha district has an A rating on the A-to-F scale, while Greenwood Leflore is a C.
Roberson’s belief in the positive aspects of consolidation has obviously been shaped by what’s transpired in the Starkville area. There, after some initial anxiety, the community bought in and, working with Mississippi State University and others, created a school district that more efficiently used its resources and raised the experience for county students without hurting it for city ones.
The benefits have been less obvious in Leflore County. Getting a C grade is a whole lot better than the F the county district was receiving prior to the merger, but there still is a lot of inefficiency from operating more campuses than there are students to justify. The district has made its first move toward addressing this problem by getting the voters’ approval to borrow the money to build a new, countywide high school, but the combination of the three current high schools into one remains probably a couple of years away. Meanwhile, Superintendent James Johnson-Waldington’s efforts to reduce the number of elementary and middle school campuses has been stalled by a divided school board.
Mike Kent, who has been MDE’s point person for many of the recent consolidations, including Greenwood Leflore, says there’s no mystery as to why some consolidations have worked out better than others. It’s all in the leadership — the same key ingredient that determines how any school district fares, consolidated or not.
A task force can recommend areas that are prime candidates for consolidation, and the Legislature can follow those recommendations. Ultimately, though, it comes down to the local superintendent and the local school board members — and the public that empowers them — to make the merger work to the benefit of the students and the taxpayers.
