Financial Pressures Make Schools Think Regionally

NORWICH - When this cash-strapped town closed its schools for spring vacation last April, it still had to pay to keep school buses rolling.

The school district continued operating buses for students attending programs outside the district, including a New London magnet school and state-run technical and agricultural high schools.

Norwich school bus: Transportation is one area that could be regionalized (Robert A. Frahm)

The cost of running the buses that week, about $20,000, could have been saved if all of the schools had been on the same vacation schedule, officials said.

This week, the Norwich Board of Education is expected to vote to join other districts in adopting a common school calendar to avoid such conflicts, hoping eventually to coordinate schedules with more than two dozen school systems in the region.

Pressured by Connecticut's mounting fiscal crisis, school districts are warming to the idea of working together to hold down costs - a sharp break from the longstanding Yankee tradition of local control and immutable district boundary lines.

"We need to let go of these border lines and boundaries that inhibit and make education costs so expensive," said Charles Jaskiewicz, Norwich's school board chairman. "We really need to work on regionalizing better."

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