Why not the Killer Whales?

Breaking news in this week’s Southampton Press indicates that the Bridgehampton School district’s longtime resistance to considering a merger with a larger district may be lessening. This is big indeed if you live in Bridgehampton; maybe less so if you live in one of the districts with which Bridgehampton might combine. Even Sag Harbor, which itself is a small district, could easily accept all of Bridgehampton’s 150 or so students without much ado. Remember, Sag Harbor is already down 105 students from its potential full enrollment due to students who attend private schools.

It’s almost indisputable that local districts would benefit from some form of consolidation –  economically, if in no other way. While relatively small itself with about 950 students, Sag Harbor is surrounded by a group of even smaller schools including Sagaponack with about 15 students, Wainscott also with about 15, Shelter Island with roughly 260 and the aforementioned Bridgehampton with 153. (All enrollment figures are estimates based on 2005 enrollment, except Bridgehampton’s which was taken from the story in the Southampton Press.) According to NYS Education Dept. figures, “instructional expenditures” per “general education pupil” for 2005 were: Sag Harbor – $10,491, Shelter Island – $13,277, and Bridgehampton – $34,423. Costs per special education pupil are higher. Figures for Wainscott and Sagaponack were not given.

I don’t think that I have to connect the dots here, the figures speak for themselves; combining districts will result in lower costs, spread over a larger tax-base. But what about the quality of the education? Will it suffer or improve? Of course, there’s no way to actually know, but at least one study shows that even were all these districts to consolidate into one, the resulting district would, at least at the high school level, have just about an ideal number of students. Dr. Sandra Stotsky, writing in EdNews.org cites the following research findings of a study reported in 1997 by Valerie Lee of the University of Michigan and Julia Smith of Western Michigan University.

“After analyzing progress in mathematics and reading from 8^th to 12^th grade for 10,000 students in a federal data base from almost 789 public and private schools of varying size, the two researchers concluded that “the ideal high school” enrolls between 600 and 900 students. Size matters, they believe, because it affects social relations within the school and the school’s ability to provide a strong curriculum for all students. Very large schools lack a sense of community and cannot shape student behavior, while very small schools cannot offer a full academic curriculum. In the Lee and Smith study, low-income students made the greatest academic gains in schools of 600-900 students. Academic gains for both low-income and high-income students declined in schools enrolling fewer than 600 students, and declined again in schools enrolling fewer than 300.”

The other potential problem resulting from school consolidation is the loss of the school as a focus of community identity and pride. Schools often serve as a locus not only for students, but also parents, alumni, sports fans and civic boosters. Community members often fear that without their school, the community will lose its sense of identity, which is exactly what Jim Walker, Vice President of Bridgehampton’s School Board, said in the Southampton Press article. Yet on its editorial page, the Press pointed out that other communities have overcome this problem, specifically mentioning the Eastport and South Manor school districts, which together opened a new high school. And, let’s face it, Bridgehampton and Sag Harbor are close enough to each other that sharing facilities would not be a logistical problem. Neither are we so different as people that we could not come together as one school community. The most difficult problem might be what to call the basketball team. I, for one, vote for The Killer Whales.

(Note to those readers who are not from this area: Bridgehampton High School’s basketball team, which has won several state championships, is known as the Killer Bees. Sag Harbor’s also very competitive teams are known as the Whalers.)