We now should feel fairly comfortable that it’s not only possible to merge the Clymer, Sherman and Panama school districts, but generally beneficial to do so now that the merger study by White and Partners has been released.

The 149-page study, for those interested, is available at tinyurl.com/3xp2dt97. In short, the study reinforces declining population trends in all three districts, suggests keeping elementary school children in their respective home communities and then operating a merged middle-high school for seventh through 12th grades in Panama for a variety of reasons. The consultants recommend maintaining all current course offerings for high school students and creating additional unique student opportunities as well.

No decisions will be made by any of the three school boards until July, when the boards will consider an official resolution saying they want to move forward with the next step of the merger process – a petition or straw poll that gauges the community’s support and the method the boards choose to use. There’s a lot of information for residents in the three towns to digest between now and then.

One of those pieces of information worth keeping in mind is that the enrollment declines that led to this point aren’t projected to change. Clymer, Sherman and Panama are three of the four smallest districts in the county, with only Forestville (379 students) falling between Clymer’s 317 students, Panama’s 382 students and Sherman’s 390 students. It’s hard to provide the type of educational and extracurricular options students want, and that taxpayers expect, with enrollments that small.

As we’ve noted before, it’s easy to support the idea of a merger when the process is in the discussion and study phase. Things start to get a little more real now that we’re at the point of figuring out if there is enough support to move forward with the process now that there is information and recommendations to think about. The next few months will be interesting to watch.