Summarizes several U.S. Supreme Court actions, including decisions to review a North Dakota case concerning fees for rural bus students and a Florida case involving differential contributions and benefits for male and female employees. The Court refused to hear certain cases involving school consolidation (Kansas City), mainstreaming of retarded…

Two aging structures were replaced by Central High School in an Indiana steel town. Planning, board and administrator support, and community involvement eased negative attitudes toward the high school closures and resulted in a $36 million school that has unified the city and will serve it for over 50 years. (MLF)

Between 1938-1980, the local administrative units of American education were transformed from small, informal community arrangements into large professionally run bureaucracies. This paper explores this structural change by analyzing variation among states in the speed and extent of school district consolidation. Consolidation stemmed largely from…

A principal whose school was closed draws from her experience 10 ways to make the school closing experience more successful. (JM)

Because 30 Australian colleges of advanced education, principally teacher training institutions, were scheduled to be amalgamated in 1982, a study was undertaken to determine the problems likely to face librarians at these institutions and to produce guidelines on amalgamation and running multi-site operations for both college administrators and…

This report contains findings and recommendations based on a study conducted to determine the feasibility of merging the Pitt County and Greenville County (North Carolina) school systems. Each school system is described in terms of pupil population patterns, building use, and educational and administrative services; issues related to these…

The flight of middle class families from the cities to the suburbs has left many cities hard pressed to continue services at former levels. Falling enrollments and revenues have led to mergers of city and county school districts or closures of city districts followed by county takeover. This report documents educators' experience of city-county…

This report presents results of a study of the administrative and governance structure of the California Maritime Academy and the Academy's relation to the California State University as well as the advantages and disadvantages of the State University's Trustees assuming more responsibility for the governance of the Academy. These responsibilities…

Decreasing fiscal budgets and declining student enrollments have forced many school districts to evaluate the alternative strategies in closing certain elementary or secondary schools, either temporarily or permanently, for purposes of consolidation. For rural and other small districts, the strategy of multiple district consolidation (merger) has…

Because larger schools offer advantages such as a greater variety of activities, economic efficiency, and a sense of identity in the community, schools are often combined. Beyond these positive effects, however, school consolidation has some negative aspects. These liabilities include less human contact, less input from teachers in…

Describes cooperation among rural schools as a means of improving education. Identifies benefits of cooperative programs, documents their rapid growth in the past decade, and calls for an infrastructure in which local districts, regional cooperatives, and state and national associations combine to provide optimum access to services, ideas, and…

Interviews with school board members and administrators produced a list of suggestions for balancing a budget in hard times. Among these are changing calendars and schedules to reduce heating and cooling costs; sharing personnel; rescheduling some extracurricular activities; and forming cooperative agreements with other districts. (MLF)

Paints a nostalgic picture of one-room schools, then identifies some of the current problems in rural school and cites some innovative solutions. Topics include problems and advantages of consolidation, regional services, sharing between districts, and the potential of telecommunications and other educational technology. (JHZ)

A large scale study was undertaken to shed light on the question of school district efficiency, that is, the extent to which school districts are able to increase achievement beyond what would be expected from their families socioeconomic origins. Average scores on state-developed and nationally-standardized tests of third, sixth, and ninth…

Conclusions reached by the Illinois State Board of Education Study, released in May 1985, that small schools are inferior and inefficient, that Illinois has too many schools, and that over half its schools should be closed seem to be an educational step backward. Without linking the two concepts, the study implies that school consolidation will…