Who here knew that there are over 5,000 school districts in Oklahoma, which the the third most of any states in the union... more than Texas even.

What can we do about that? Should we fix it? There has got to be a ton of tax dollars wasted on administration, and they wonder why our schools are in need of more funding all the time!

A porposal comes up every 10 years or so, there have only been a few districts that have done it. I think it would be hard for the urban/suburban districts to merge and become even larger, at some point there is a law of diminishing returns.

For the most part the smaller rural districts should consolidate into countywide districts, but the small towns have killed it because they think they wll lose their identity and become irrelavent. Which in some cases, has come true. They may consolidate three high schools into one and what is left in a town is only an elementary school which hardly is the focal point of community pride. I feel that if they could consolidate the administration and school board functions that it would help reduce overhead. The problem is people want to have their own little fiefdoms and not share power.

I say each county should be able to have two districts, unless there are more than 15,000 folks, and then there must be over 1,000 students in a district. This keeps urban or suburban districts from consolidating. Also this will more than reduce the total of districts to an appropriate level.

It's very corrupt. Especially the teacher lobby. I've had to go against those guys in the state capital time after time... they are so adamant and unwilling to meet in a middle ground on an issue. Most issues they're adamant about don't even have anything to do with more pay for teachers. It's become a Militant Teacher Political Party, basically.

That's a good idea Spartan, but don't you think it makes too much sense? After all, who benefits from sense?

Umm, it's like 500 school districts.
I agree, we need some concolidation. But your savings will be pretty small, the big costs in those rural districts are teachers pay and transportation, and you are not going to see much in savings, because the transportation costs will stay the same or increase (got to haul all those high school kids to the 1 or 2 high schools), and with class size limits you either transport the elementary and middle school kids, or keep the teachers.
Some of it could be done, but less than we all want to believe.
Most would probably be in eastern Oklahoma.
(By the way, it wasn't the OEA who killed the last consolidation proposal, it was rural republicans)