Feb 12, 2019 By Terry J. Boors 3 min read

I’ve read with great interest the proposals of Tim Mahoney about supporting a cadre of candidates that would support a proposal for school consolidation of Fayette County’s six current school districts. I neither agree or disagree with the idea, but I have some interesting issues for further contemplation. Unless I understand differently, these will be ‘volunteer positions’ with no financial reimbursement? Each district to get ‘one vote’ and one ‘at large’ person to control all financial, education and other associated athletic issues for all of the current Fayette County School Districts.

Do any of you see any problems with that design? Let’s say that the reps from districts A, B, C, and D band together to control the vote over the remaining districts. Potentially one of the largest districts in the county with the most students could end up in the ‘minority’ and their district could be shortchanged when it came to funding issues.

In another scenario A, B and C are on one ‘side’ and D, E, and F are on the other, and then the ‘at large’ member controls the ultimate vote for a multitude of issues. Who is to say what district this individual comes from? If you have enough $ and have the ‘powers to be’ supporting you, control over an entire county school system is at stake and lies with one person! That is not a representative form of government for our schools and presents a myriad of future potential problems ‘at large’.

The major issue with this idea is that our state legislature is not obligated to follow this format that is being proposed. No such structure is in existence in Pennsylvania’s school systems, and if you think that all 500 current districts are going to consolidate under such a plan, good luck with that! Large counties like Allegheny with multiple school systems would become a nightmare to manage, much like we see with our state legislature. They voted down a measure to shrink the size of the state government.

I commend Mr. Mahoney for his idea, but perhaps he should present it to the citizens of each individual school district in a ‘town meeting’ concept to see if there would be enough support from the local taxpayers and parents to consider this idea in the next election cycle to be held in 2021. Perhaps our State Representatives Dowling and Warner, and State Senator Stefano would be able to present ‘bills’ before the legislature to see if support would be there to formally change each counties structure of how school systems across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania are operated.

Terry J. Boors is a retired professional educator of 34 years, and a resident of Dunbar Township. He is a former 1993 ‘Thanks to Teacher’s Honoree’ from KDKA Television in Pittsburgh, and a former Connellsville Area School District 1997 Educator of the Year as awarded by the Central Fayette County Chamber of Commerce.