During childhood, the period of growth and development, students are greatly influenced by their community and environment. As a student at Berlin, a rather small and quiet township, I was able to know all the faces and names of my 100 classmates in my grade.

In a populated environment such as Eastern Regional High School, it is impossible to know every name and face of my graduating grade.

In 2018, New Jersey Senate President Steve Sweeney has proposed his school consolidation plan, in which all school districts will be merged into K-12 regional districts. The aim is for a standardized curriculum across schools and for financial savings on administrative costs.

However, the consolidation of bulks of students have other concerning issues to consider. While increasing the quantity of students, there is actually a decrease in educational quality. Similar to mass production, while products will be produced rapidly to meet consumer demands, the quality of the products will be reduced.

While the plan itself is created under amiable objectives, I argue that school consolidation will bring a decrease in educational quality and an increase in financial expenses; therefore, it should not be enacted.

Although consolidated schools have a more standardized educational systems, this will decrease educational quality rather than improve it. If a bulk of students are added to the typical 23 students in a school classroom, there will be an very big imbalance of the student-to-staff ratio. Younger students require more time and individual attention from teachers and therefore require a more balanced ratio.

In a blog by Fremont college, they entailed the benefits of smaller classes to include coursework that can be adapted to fit the class. In this sense, instructors can tailor their approach according to the learning styles of the small group of students; customized curriculums allows hard but fast progression.

Close student-teacher relationships can provide emotional support and encourage students to become more involved with school.

Although school consolidations may provide savings on administrative costs, other higher costs will offset the savings, increase in net costs. One potential source of higher costs derives from transportation. Students mainly use buses as their primary source of transportation to school. Bus routes include a number of other pick-up locations. To the extent that consolidating districts make use of larger schools, the traveling time for the longer average transportation mileage will also increase, therefore inducing high transportation expenses.

In the Journal of Research in Rural Education, a research conducted by Streifel examined 19 school district consolidations in ten states. Of the six expenditure categories studied (administration, instruction, transportation, operation and maintenance, total cost, and capital cost), only administrative costs was related to consolidation at a statistically significant level.

As concluded, consolidation districts increased administrative costs 10 percent while the average cost increase was 31 percent.” The total costs per pupil in three out of the five consolidated Arkansas district increased by 32% whereas the statewide average only maintained 29% (“The Financial Effects of Consolidation”). Another aspect to take into consideration is the taxes paid to the school.

Consolidation will mean cheaper school tax for the wealthy. Consolidation will mean expensive school tax for the poor. School consolidation will mean unfair taxing on different social classes. The main argument is that while taxes paid for the school will be evenly spread amongst all the tax-payers and therefore decreasing the amount paid by each individual household, there will be an unfair advantage for the upper families and an unfair disadvantage for the lower families. For the lower class, their old tax rates would have been cheaper due to lower educational communal standards.

While arguing against school consolidation, one should consider instances in which schools have been consolidated in real life. Since the 1990s, West Virginia has enforced their consolidated school and overall, consolidation failed to live up to its promises.

In a few statistical statements, the inevitable failure of consolidation is prevalent. For example, over 36,000 students take one-way bus rides loner than the state guideline of 60 minutes. In terms of academics, school officials had promised advanced courses that were never materialized; some consolidated high schools offered fewer courses than what smaller schools offered prior to consolidation.

To add on, the reporters found that 100 advanced classes promised through consolidation had not been offered in the previous two years (“School Consolidation Failed to Live Up to Its Promise”). Overall, policies promised through school consolidation have not been attained even in areas such as West Virginia that have enforced it.

While West Virginia do not fulfill their promises, other states might not either. With these findings, the benefits of regular district schools outweigh the benefits of consolidated regional schools.

NJ Senate President Steve Sweeney’s proposed plan of consolidated school districts on the basis of alleviating financial expenses and improving educational quality is a questionable statement. With studies showing how the overall expenses of consolidating schools will become an addition to American’s heavy debt and how consolidated schools reduce academic quality, this policy would not only be unable to satisfy the promised promises, but it will also harm us.