This report is part of the series of publications that have been written about reorganization since 1980. Every year one or more reports are produced that summarize and analyze current reorganization activities and address special topics about school consolidation. In the vast majority of instances the school boards first entered into whole-grade sharing agreements with neighboring schools. Whole-grade sharing is a local board of director approved contract to send all students in one or more grades to another district, and all contracts to this point involve at least the high school.
Most partnerships are two way sharing arrangements where both districts send students to the other.
For example, a common form of sharing is for one district to operate the high school and the other run the middle school. There were 437 districts running their own high schools in 1984-85. Since 1985, the number of school districts has declined by 48. The reduction includes 46 reorganizations, one dissolution, and one failure to meet standards. With a few exceptions the reorganizations first involved several years of whole-grade sharing.