Senator to Hold School Consolidation Hearing

State Senator John Wozniak of Johnstown is hosting a hearing on possible school district consolidation today that will take testimony from former superintendents, education experts, and state Education Secretary Gerald Zahorchak. Wozniak is the sponsor of a bill that would begin a study of the consolidation option. Wozniak says he wants to “take the emotion out of it” and look at the issue from a taxpayer’s viewpoint.

“When you look at a school district, you look at how many students are in the school district and you look at how many taxpayers there are, obviously most of the people do not have a horse in the [race]. They don’t have children in the school, but they’re paying the tax money. So what they want to do, is anything that we can do to make their school districts more efficient and less costly to them, they’re going to be for it,” says Wozniak.

He says many other states use county-wide districts. “Maryland only has 23 school districts; we have 500. That’s 500 superintendents, that’s 500 solicitors, that’s 500 business agents, and you can get the picture here of how many hundreds of millions of dollars that are being spent redundantly out there that can be used more towards the education and not to foster inefficient forms of government,” says Wozniak.

Wozniak says he’s not in love with large districts, but he doesn’t like wasteful spending. He says parents would have to make some sacrifices – longer bus rides and playing different football teams, to name a few – but the average taxpayer would benefit from the change.