Discussion on School Consolidation with Susan Meston, Ph.D.,
Superintendent of the MAISD
by Rob Huisingh
Announcer: Welcome to Inside Michigan Education, a weekly show featuring interviews with community leaders, school administrators, school business officials and individuals who are passionate about the future of Michigan education. And now here is your host for Inside Michigan Education, Rob Huisingh.
Rob Huisingh: Welcome to Inside Michigan Education. In this week’s episode we’re joined by Dr. Susan Meston, Superintendent of the Muskegon Area Intermediate School District. Welcome Dr. Meston and thank you for joining us.
Dr. Susan Meston: Well thank you for asking me to join.
Rob Huisingh: In 1962, the Michigan State Legislature enacted Public Act 190 training 57 Intermediate School Districts and Regional Educational Service Agencies. What was the overarching goal that state law makers were trying to achieve?
Dr. Susan Meston: One of the reasons that Intermediate School Districts were formed initially was to offer consolidated services and an economy of scale thereby conserving resources for school districts. Although we have a number of large school districts in the state of Michigan, we have way more small districts and Intermediate School Districts provided for an economy of scale and provided the opportunity to offer programs that smaller districts couldn’t offer and let me give you some examples. One would be special education services through center programming. Most Intermediate School Districts run those programs. Another example is cooperative purchasing. Intermediate School Districts help local districts in purchasing equipment from computers, to school buses, to pencils, and even garbage service, providing oversight liaison roles with the state, with the community agencies, with the police, and fire and also with vocational programs. A lot of Intermediate School Districts run career tech centers. So those are some of the things that Intermediate School Districts do. 
Rob Huisingh: You know lately there’s been a lot of well, let’s say there has been a significant level of discussion about consolidation in education. I was reading your column in MyBiz last month and you made a distinction between consolidating school services versus consolidation of school districts. I gather this is an important distinction?
Dr. Susan Meston: It’s a very important distinction. If you’re consolidating districts, then two school districts would actually join together and become one. With consolidated services, districts would maintain their own identities, you’d still have that football game on Friday night with the Oakridge Eagles versus the Orchid View Cardinals for example, and districts would have their own identity. What we would consolidate would be functions such as transportation, food services, business functions, data processing, those sorts of things. From what I see consolidation of services is a lot more palatable to people in communities than consolidation of districts. A really important entity though that people always forget to include in discussions of consolidations is the local school board and they are legislated bodies, they are elected officials in the community and they are the ones that actually will make any decisions about consolidations of function, consolidation of districts. 
Rob Huisingh: Dr. Meston, with Michigan and what has been coined a one state recession, and with our budget issues having not truly been resolved but merely pushed off until next year and without any significant improvements on the horizon, it would seem that the issue isn’t whether to consolidate but what to consolidate. I’ve seen that you have advocated a systematic evaluation of consolidation measures, I was wondering if you would share that analysis with our listeners.
Dr. Susan Meston: Yeah, I’d really like to. It is very important to have a systematic to analyze the consolidation that’s been suggested, and the first factor would be students. How are students affected by the change? Is it a positive change, is the impact negative, or does it have a little impact at all? Costs, are they reduced, are they increased, are they flat? And the quality of service, sometimes the quality is enhanced, sometimes it’s not when you consolidate. So that would have to be reviewed. Staffing. Does the consolidation increase staff or decrease staff. The community, how will the consolidation affect parents, how will it affect students within the community and does the proposed consolidation make sense. When you think about it, is this something that makes sense because when you have an economy of scale, that can really be a useful thing and it does make sense for a lot of functions but then it stops making sense if it creates some kind of a bureaucratic nightmare or the consolidation doesn’t help students in the way you think that it would, so it’s important to think about those things.
Rob Huisingh: Supporters of School District Consolidation suggest that districts below an identifiable size should consolidate with a neighboring district. I live in one of those small communities, now perhaps not as small as some of the communities. I was having lunch yesterday and was talking to a gentlemen who was mentioning that his school district had 400 students and that’s a bit smaller than what I am thinking of, but I do live in a relatively small district and it seems to me that the district is part of the very fabric of our community and is this a common perception?
Dr. Susan Meston: It is a common perception, particularly for people on a small community. It isn’t as widely held by some people in larger areas. But school districts are really a powerful force in a community. They are the identity, a lot of times, in particularly in a small community, they bring people together for really positive events that focus on the talent of children usually, and young people and children whether it’s sporting or plays, arts events, things like that. You’re right, it’s a thread in the fabric of the community. If a school district goes away, part of the identity is wounded, and that’s a very important thought to keep in mind when people are talking about consolidation of school districts and I think that’s also why functional consolidation resonates more with people than actually combining districts. 
Rob Huisingh: Dr. Meston I’ve have an opportunity to be involved in meetings with you in the past and I have known and I’ve noticed that you consider it one of your personal missions to focus on making schools more efficient, to cut costs in any way possible and to increase the performance of education and this is something obviously that’s very important to you.
Dr. Susan Meston: Yes it is. Reducing cost is one of the missions of the ISD and I take that very personally. We’ve been given a lot of responsibility from the state of Michigan, I don’t know if you’re aware that the Department of Education had significant numbers of staff cut and so their responsibilities have been passed on to the Intermediate School District, so we are an ever more important link between local districts and the state of Michigan. Also with our locals, we spend time at every superintendent’s meeting discussing ways that we can improve services. We have a Cooperative Practices Committee that looks specifically at ways to save money by working together, and I think the garbage collection was a perfect example. We have saved about $800,000 by cooperative bidding our garbage collection services and one would not think of the Intermediate School District in terms of a garbage collection bid but that’s one of the things that we’ve done. And certainly, in the area of professional development, bringing teachers together, administrators together to learn so that we are more effective in the teaching and learning process with the ultimate goal of student learning, increasing student achievement, getting better, we’re always looking at that.
Rob Huisingh: Thank you Dr. Meston for joining us today, it’s been a pleasure to have you here, your wealth of knowledge and I appreciate your commitment to everything that you do at the ISD.
Dr. Susan Meston: Well thank you for allowing me to join you for this fun podcast Rob.
Rob Huisingh: For more information about the MAISD, you can find them online at www.muskegonisd.org, again that’s www.muskegonisd.org or by telephone at 231-777-2631. We mentioned Dr. Meston’s column earlier, it’s titled Ed-Buzz and it’s available online at www.mybiz.com Again, that’s Ed-Buzz at www.mybiz.com. Until next week this is Rob Huisingh with Inside Michigan Education.
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