School consolidation center of Ark. political battle

Six years ago Arkansas enacted a law requiring school consolidation if a district has fewer than 350 students two years in a row. The law has been a common target of politicians hoping to gain traction among rural voters, but so far no serious challenge has been mounted to it, Andrew DeMillo of The Associated Press reports. The latest district on the merger block is the Weiner School District in Northeast Arkansas, which had just 313 students last year and is set to be merged with neighboring Harrisburg this week, though an advocacy group has filed a lawsuit seeking a last-minute reprieve.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Jim Keet is the latest politician to campaign against the consolidation law, but even he was reluctant to embrace the Weiner district's cause. "If I thought this was a good political issue for me, I would probably need to have my head examined," Keet told reporters last week. Keet said he favors a law that considers school performance. "I would rather have a school district that has 342 students and is doing an excellent job than one that has 400 students in it that is doing a poor job of educating our children," Keet said. "I think it's all based on performance."

"The consolidation law was enacted as part of the state's response to a long-running school funding lawsuit that ended in 2009 when the state Supreme Court said that Arkansas had adequately funded its schools," contrarry to the suit's contentions, DeMillo writes. State Rep. Buddy Lovell held up the Education Department's budget last year in hopes of amending the law to give rural schools more time to boost their enrollment, but his proposal died in a Senate committee. Now advocates for changing the law hope Arkansas' term limits will improve their chances, as fewer lawmakers who were around for the original battle remain in the legislature. (Read more)

Writing in the Daily Yonder, Timothy Collins, assistant director of the Illinois Institute for Rural Affairs at Western Illinois University, argues, "Conditions across rural America now make the case for small, community schools even more compelling." (Read more)