Senate Bill 5487 to encourage school consolidation

WENATCHEE – Sen. Brad Hawkins would like to see fewer small districts in the state. On Monday, Dec. 6, the Wenatchee Republican pre-filed Senate Bill 5487 to entice small school districts to consolidate or merge with larger neighboring districts.

Under his bill, newly formed consolidated or merged districts would receive a 10-year increase in a state assistance formula that provides matching funds for construction, expansion and renovation.

Hawkins, the chairman of the Senate Early Learning and K-12 Education Committee, said he introduced the bill as a way to reduce the cost to educate rural students. “I’ve been encouraging my legislative colleagues to think differently about how we deliver educational services,” Hawkins said. “If we were to reimagine school districts today based on what we spend on education, we wouldn’t draw up 295 different school districts in our state, especially when many of the small school districts are spending much more than the state average per student. It doesn’t make sense for the taxpayers.”

According to Hawkins, the average cost to educate a student during the 2019-20 school year was $13,879. But rural schools spend as much as $28,000. He pointed to costs in rural districts near Wenatchee, such as Mansfield that spends $26,342 per student. The state reports the average cost per student at private K-12 schools is $11,843 annually.

According to Hawkins, having fewer small schools would reduce educational costs, and cut and/or eliminate administration costs. “I think a ‘voluntary, incentives-based’ consolidation bill might avoid the controversy of past proposals and prompt some healthy and candid conversations,” he said.

The bill will be introduced in the upcoming 2022 legislative session, slated to begin Jan. 10.

Odessa School Superintendent Dan Read’s only comment, when asked about Hawkins’ bill, was, “This comes up every few years, mainly from those from the other side of the state who have no clue about how small schools operate, available space in small and rural schools for other schools or how far students need to travel on a bus for school and school activities.”