Arkansas House Speaker Pans Consolidation Plan by Blue Ribbon Commission -- Rural Policy Matters, Volume 4, Number 8 (August 2002)

A leading Arkansas legislator says he does not believe the consolidation of small schools into regional high schools will save Arkansas taxpayers money and he won't support a proposal to do so by the Arkansas Blue Ribbon Commission on Public Education.

According to the Arkansas Democrat Gazette (July 24, 2002), Representative Herschel Cleveland of Paris, Arkansas, the incoming speaker of the Arkansas House of Representatives, says consolidation won't likely save money because of the initial investment in new schools and the fact that administrative positions are usually not eliminated by consolidation, just moved from one place to another.

Cleveland, who graduated from a class of 20 at Magazine High School in Arkansas, told the Arkansas Farm Bureau that money is not the main issue in consolidation anyway. He said small schools do a better job of educating troubled kids because "you see those folks who are about to fall through the cracks, and you can lift them up and help them."

The regional high school plan is only one of many Blue Ribbon Commission recommendations that will be considered by the legislature next year. A court decision declaring the state's school funding system unconstitutionally inequitable and inadequate has created intense interest in public education in Arkansas. One of the schools most likely to be consolidated is Lakeview, the tiny rural school in the state's poor Delta region that filed the lawsuit 10 years ago.

"If Lakeview is consolidated, there will be fewer starters on football teams, fewer presidents of student councils, fewer valedictorians...All consolidation will do is create big conglomerates that are more difficult to manage [and] do not generate the kind of community support that you will see in small towns."