The financial woes of the Hollister School District have
recently raised an old question: would unification help solve the
district’s problems?
Hollister – The financial woes of the Hollister School District have recently raised an old question: would unification help solve the district’s problems?
In December HSD teachers suggested the district combine with San Benito High School District. Teachers claimed the move would save money for both districts by eliminating unnecessary administrative costs. In January, SBHS Superintendent Dr. Jean Burns Slater urged high school board members to approach the idea of unification with the Hollister School District cautiously.
“This district is fiscally sound and if we are going to look into unifying with a district that is facing fiscal problems, we need to do so very carefully,” Slater said at the time.
The lack of enthusiasm from SBHS has meant that since then, Hollister School District has had no conversations about unification.
“It’s not anything we can look at right now,” said Board of Trustees member Dee Brown.
If unification would result in better use of resources, Brown said the idea would make sense. Brown acknowledged that any plan for unification would involve trade-offs.
“It would be to our advantage and the high school’s disadvantage,” Brown said.
The state gives high school-only districts more money per pupil than K-8 and K-12 districts. Thus, SBHS would receive less money per student if the two districts unified.
In 2002 the Joint Committee to Develop a Master Plan for Education in California recommended the Legislature develop fiscal incentives to promote school district unification. Since then no legislation has been proposed, said Larry Shirey, a field representative for the School Fiscal Services division of the California Department of Education.
The joint committee also recommended the Legislature eliminate disincentives to unification and proposed a comprehensive study to determine the optimal size ranges for school districts.
“There has been some rumblings in the new master plan,” Shirey said. “There’s no enacting legislation, but there is some interest.”
According to the report, “Local districts should, where appropriate, consolidate, disaggregate, or form networks to share operational aspects, to ensure that the educational needs of their students are effectively met and that their operational efficiency is maximized.”
In the 1960s the Legislature enacted incentives similar to those recommended by the joint committee in 2002. Many districts applied for unification with the Department of Education, but two-thirds failed to pass CDE scrutiny.
Many of the proposals would have had a negative affect on some school districts, especially those with large populations of minority students. This year, in the absence of new incentive legislation, only two districts applied for unification. Not a single district in California applied for unification last year.
Unification is a complex process which can take up to five years and would ultimately have to be approved by the state Department of Education. It does not have to have the approval of the administrations of the districts involved because the decision would lie with voters residing in those districts.
Brown said unification of HSD and SBHS would be unlikely unless “there was a broad base of community support.” Evidence of such support has so far failed to materialize. And since incentive legislation for unification has not been proposed, the issue has failed to resurface at meetings for either school board.
San Benito High School was established in 1875 as a small grammar school on San Benito Street. In 1909 the school’s first building was completed at it’s current location. The district has never been unified.
Brett Rowland covers education for the Free Lance. He can be reached at 831-637-5566 ext. 330 or [email protected].
