The Rendell administration holds that enlarging districts would lead to better schools and to lower - and fairer - taxes by reducing administrative costs and spreading property wealth.
School officials in financially struggling Pottstown and Morrisville like the idea. And nationally, the trend has been toward ever-larger school districts. In the 1939-40 school year, the nation had 117,108 districts. Today, it has fewer than 15,000.
But the merger idea isn't a big hit everywhere. Home rule is an issue in Lower Merion and Jenkintown, both well-off, high-achieving districts that fear losing fiscal and educational independence.
"There is no research that suggests that we would become a better school district by becoming part of a bigger school district," said Douglas Young, spokesman for the Lower Merion district.
And the state's property-tax system looms as a huge factor in any merger plan. That system is riddled with inequities fueled in large measure by disparities in real estate wealth among districts. Those disparities have widened in the four decades since the last major round of mergers.
Consolidation, theoretically, would ease some of those disparities.
Ironically, however, the very flaws in the system loom as major impediments to changing it.
While the majority of property owners might see tax decreases, some likely would have to pay more, regardless of any cost savings.
"There would be winners and losers," said State Sen. Jeffrey E. Piccola, the Dauphin County Republican who chairs the Education Committee.
The Democrats haven't been holding pep rallies, either. "No one is saying this is the best thing since peanut butter and jelly, let's go do it," said State Sen. Andrew E. Dinniman (D., Chester), minority chair of the committee. "At this point, it's going nowhere."
