Should small towns and schools be conjoined into cities to make bigger schools.

I look forward to a well-mannered and well-presented debate! I would first like to state that because there weren't any stated rules, I am allowed to define and clarify terms to make things easier for the judges to understand. I am also allowed to state a few rules, because there aren't any formal ones here. My opponent's claim, or question for that matter, is "Should small towns and schools be conjoined into cities to make bigger schools. " I will define these phrases as such: "Small Schools" : Any high school with under 400 students enrolled, or any K-8 school with under 200 students enrolled [1] "Small Towns" : Any town with less than 1000 residents [2] "Conjoined into cities" : For this matter, I won't exactly have a source, but instead how I am interpreting it. It would be ridiculous to uproot all the families living in small towns and move them to a city, but that is not the argument here. I will define this conjoined state as referencing the school districts themselves. These are really the only two definitions at this moment. I hold the right to reference any other definitions in future rounds of this debate. Furthermore, even previous to beginning my arguments/refutations, I would like to state that Con needs to stick to what was stated in round 1. Knowing this, Con "will say why it is good to conjoin small towns," along with the arguments that I will provide. Now to begin the debate aspect of this round. I will begin with refutations of my opponents arguments presented in round one. R1) "Small town communities are just really big families. " They may be close, but that doesn't go to saying that this type of dedication to the rest of the community isn't seen in larger towns. Also, in a literal sense, most (if not all) small towns are not actually all related. Even looking at the non-literal point of view, this is not something only seen in small towns. Communities around the nation work together to rally towards a common cause, even in towns with more than 1,000 residents. R2) "They sometimes hate sometimes love each other. " Not really relevant. This is true, but similar to my first refutation, this is seen all over. R3) "If it were to happen in a more city like area or large town then they would've probably been thrown into the foster system. " No source, as well as just being a guess. No doubt in my town (a town of over 40,000 people), should a child lose both of his parents, someone would step up and take them in. Now I will move onto some of my arguments. 1) Greater Opportunity for Better Education By combining school districts, and therefore fewer schools, positions for teaching would drop a slight bit. While this may be one of the sole detriments to this, these fewer teacher positions would allow only the best teachers to hold these spots. With this in mind, students would be able to get only the highest form of education. 2) Better Competition for Sports and Clubs These combined school districts would allow for sports teams, as well as competitive clubs such as speech and chess team, to have more students to recruit and find participants from. For example, many sports are divided into certain divisions for the state meets, giving smaller schools the opportunity to compete against other smaller schools. Combining schools could end up condensing this process to a singular state meet or competition, allowing a true champion to be decided. This is similar to the Olympics; countries with smaller populations are not stated as best in the world at the Olympics, even though the reigning champions hail from larger countries. 3) Better funding for schools In theory, the funding would simply be added together, so the overall level of funding wouldn't change. What this would mean, however, is that the money would be more evenly distributed to all students. For example, a school in a larger town may have enough money to spend $1,000 per student (not actual numbers; just an example). A nearby small town only has funding for $500 per student. When combining these schools, the amount of money per student may average out to be around $800 or $850 per student, resulting in a better education for students coming from the smaller schools. I would like to remind Con that in keeping with the conduct of the debate, he/she must "say why it is good to conjoin small towns. " Sources: - [1] . http://epsl.asu.edu... (Section 3, Defining Small Schools) - [2] . http://www.city-data.com...