Jul 29, 2018 4 min read

Back in December 1863, The Atlantic magazine published “The Man Without a Country,” a short story about an American Army lieutenant who renounces his U.S. citizenship while on trial for treason. As a result, he is sentenced to spend the rest of his life floating on a boat at sea, with no word from home and no place where he can plant roots.

Along somewhat similar lines, high school students in the Midland Borough School District in Beaver County have been forced to wander from one neighboring district to another without a permanent home for more than 35 years. Rather than a tale of treason, it’s a tale that highlights flaws in Pennsylvania’s policies on school mergers, and how those policies shortchange students in districts that are stuck in dire economic circumstances.

Here’s how Midland’s woes have unfolded: In 1983, at the depths of the region’s industrial collapse and depopulation, the borough’s school district sought to merge with another Beaver County district but was rebuffed. After its high school closed two years later, its high schoolers were shipped to the Beaver Area School District. However, according to a report released last week by the nonprofit organization EdBuild, Midland students, “many of whom were nonwhites and from poorer homes, encountered hostility in their new school, and Beaver Area never fully welcomed them.” The Midland students were forced to find another home when the agreement was scrapped five years later, and Midland ended up having to send its high school students 20 minutes away to East Liverpool, Ohio. More recently, they have been scattered to charter institutions, along with schools within the Beaver Area district.

EdBuild cited Midland, along with a district outside Poughkeepsie, N.Y., as examples of how poorer districts are harmed by laws that effectively hinder the merger and consolidation of school districts. In Pennsylvania, both districts must agree to a merger before it can take place. The state offers no inducements for a financially or academically stronger district to merge with a struggling one, so most opt against it. In the words of EdBuild’s report, this leaves the weaker district “stranded.”

The report explained, “From the vantage point of a financially healthy district, (a merger) could only mean either higher taxes or fewer resources per students when the same tax dollars must stretch further. And while the state could always step in and require districts to consolidate, stretching a lifeline across the border, few states – just nine – have the legal structure in place to do so. Instead, merger decisions are almost always left to the discretion of local boards or voters, making it all but certain that insolvent districts will be left to fend for themselves. This leaves students in limbo, trying to learn in districts that can’t break the cycle of decline.”

And it’s certainly not out of the question that there could be more Midlands in the region’s future, as some communities continue to lose population. Poorer and rural districts with a declining number of graduates every year could meet the same fate.

What can be done? Short of completely changing the mechanism for how we fund schools, or adopting consolidated, countywide districts with shared administrative functions, lawmakers in Harrisburg should consider financial incentives to wealthier districts that would make them more amenable to helping their less well-off neighbors. The commonwealth should also play the role of mediator in potential mergers.

After all, the Pennsylvania Code states, “All persons residing in this commonwealth between the ages of 6 and 21 years of age are entitled to a free and full education in the commonwealth’s public schools.” Harrisburg must live up to this responsibility by helping struggling districts.