Relation of School District Reorganization to Finance and Business Administration

MORE interest concerning the need for district reorganization has been shown during the past three years than ever before. Grieder made approximately the same statement concerning the three-year period preceding the April 1947 issue of the REVIEW. The accelerating interest in district reorganization is shown by the following: The April 1947 REVIEW included references to 17 state surveys and commission reports devoted in whole or in part to district reorganization and four national studies; the present number includes references to 23 state studies and nine national studies; the past three-year period has been one of implementation and achievement in district reorganization; and some aspects of the subject were reviewed by Cooper in the October 1949 issue of the REVIEW. In 1948 Wochner (59) made a study of reorganization activity and found that 27 states were reorganizing local school units in some degree and that 15 of the states were reorganizing as a result of a formal reorganization act which sets up machinery for doing it. He reported that the number of local administrative units had declined from 117,000 in 1940 to 94,000 in 1948. The Illinois State Advisory Commission (30) reported that the number of districts in Illinois had been reduced from 11,906 in 1946 to 5859 in 1949. By legislative action Florida (25) in 1947 abolished 720 local tax districts and reorganized the state into 67 complete county units with no subdistricts. Texas (56) as a result of legislation enacted by the 1949 Legislature has already eliminated about 1500 small districts and all territory is now in some school district. Idaho (24) has reorganized or partially reorganized 29 of its 44 counties. These recent developments are much more encouraging than were achievements in previous years. Smith (53) made a study of state constitutional and statutory plans for district reorganization between 1938 and 1947. He found that only nine states had set up definite statutory plans for reorganization of districts and that most statutes dealt with the piecemeal consolidation of schools rather than the elimination of the evils of the small district.