A consultant's report to Gov. Barbour's special school consolidation study commission recommends merging 18 school districts (three in Northeast Mississippi) and three agricultural high schools, but the information is a long process away from becoming law and policy.

Tupelo banker Aubrey Patterson, chairman of the task force, described the group's effort as a work in process, but the initial recommendations illuminate the difficulties involved in combining school districts.

Consultant John Augenblick said consolidations recommended Monday could save substantial amounts locally in the long term ($12 million-$14 million) but would cost the state more in the early years.

Gov. Barbour had projected savings of $65 million if the number of districts statewide were reduced through consolidation from 152 to 100. The findings presented Monday don't appear to support such substantial savings anytime soon.

Augenblick also cited non-financial difficulties as another set of issues, and indeed those could prove the most difficult barriers regardless of the soundness of final arguments and recommendations.

In Northeast Mississippi, the identified mergers included Aberdeen with Amory, Okolona with the Chickasaw or Houston districts, and Oktibbeha County with Starkville. As a matter of history, it should be noted that intra-county mergers have proven problematic in past episodes of consolidation, but in the long term consolidation usually eventually has gone forward when local school boards stood their ground on the issue.

We believe fully exploring the possibilities of consolidation could provide compelling, quantifiable reasons to move forward, but anything not clearly arguable will prove politically problematic in the Legislature.

Two other states, Maine and Vermont, are involved in statewide consolidation programs, and in Maine a popular referendum requirement has doomed many of the proposed "regional" districts at the ballot box.

Augenblick told the study group that he could not find the $65 million in savings Barbour cited using the criteria specified and that achieving Barbour's goal "you would be picking up places where it would not help much."

Augenblick said he believes merging the districts he cited, many of them in the educationally troubled Mississippi Delta, would result in more efficiencies and would provide more courses for students in those schools.

One fact seldom cited in the consolidation discussion is that many of today's most successful public schools and districts are the products of previous consolidations and realignments related to size, resources and desegregation.

Every district can improve, and consolidation is one of the methods that should be considered in shaping higher performance and better education for students, the most important factor.