Obviously, consolidated districts that already exist weren’t covered under this mandate, so the commission was actually looking at 108 elementary schools and 15 high school districts in nine of Arizona’s 15 counties. (In Maricopa County, which is the size of Massachusetts, they proposed four separate plans.)

They surveyed all the affected districts and held hearings in Prescott, Phoenix and Tucson. And they came up with a plan, which will go before voters in the November election. But here’s the rub: Every individual district slated to go into a unified district must approve the plan. If any one district says no, the unification plan is dead.

Some areas of Arizona will likely approve their unification, and we can cheer every time it happens. Shultz says that if everyone said yes, it would free up $20 million to be spent in classrooms, rather than for administrative costs, in the first year alone. And that’s the whole point, he notes. “We’re trying to move money from administration to the classroom,” he says.

Right now, if you look at the nation as a whole, about 62 percent of all tax money for education is being spent in the classroom. In Arizona, the average is between 58 and 59 percent. In Shultz’s old Osborn District of north central Phoenix, it’s 50 percent. Mesa, which is already a unified district and is not affected by these plans, beats most of Arizona’s other districts by spending about 63 percent of its money in the classroom, proving that this unification thing indeed works.

Shultz admits he naively thought everyone would get in line. “Being a public school advocate, I saw this as a bulwark against the charter and home school movements – I thought educators would agree that we need to spend more in the classroom,” he says. “Instead, I was surprised by the resistance to change by school boards and school officials.”

School officials obviously saw unification as eliminating lots of jobs – how else do you save $20 million? – and few people will support a plan that will put them on the street. Meanwhile, many sitting school board members see their posts as springboard positions into political careers and don’t want to be eliminated, either. The one group Shultz hopes might still come around are teachers, especially elementary school teachers in small districts who, the commission found, are paid considerably less than teachers in unified or high school districts.

But Shultz isn’t giving up, and he hopes that by November voters will see things the commission’s way. “I’m counting on the wisdom of crowds,” he says, as people see the facts and figures and realize we’re wasting

tons of money on this “local control” fixation.

While the commission’s plan might get voter approval in some parts of Arizona, the political realist in me sees the biggest fights and the bleakest chances in the Valley of the Sun, where “mega districts” are on the drawing board.

“I don’t see the case for unification,” says Chris Thomas, who wears two important hats in this picture: He’s president of the Madison School District, and he’s the chief legal counsel for the Arizona School Board Association. Both are on record as opposing unification.

In fact, in the Madison district’s rejection letter to the commission rejecting the unification plan, Thomas and his fellow board members declared, “We are certain Madison would be greatly harmed and that would indeed be a very bad thing for this community and its students.”

The Madison School District is one of the best in the state. At 117 years old, its academic achievements have raised the property values of the homes within its boundaries, and some 20 percent of its enrollment comes from outside the district.

Originally, the commission proposed a total of five K-12 districts in Phoenix. That plan would have combined Madison with three other elementary districts and Camelback and North high schools. The Madison School Board didn’t like that plan much, either.

But eventually the commission decided to go with one mega district covering all of Phoenix. That means Madison would be melded with the other 12 elementary districts in Phoenix and all the Phoenix Union high schools into a district with some 108,000 students – the largest district in all of Arizona. (Mesa now holds the No. 1 ranking with 75,000 students.)

Meanwhile, another mega district would combine the Tempe Union High School district with the Kyrene and Tempe elementary districts for about 43,000 students. And a third would combine Glendale Union High with Washington and Glendale elementary districts for a 50,000-student district.

“There’s a currency of trust built up over time in a school district,” Thomas notes. “It’s that currency that allows you to pass bond issues and overrides that are needed, because we don’t fund education enough in Arizona. Why would you jeopardize that?”

Meanwhile, he says the school board association would favor unification “if the local district wants to do it.” But that isn’t the case here, he adds. “This is being imposed by a state entity that has no sensitivity to local concerns.”

I’d rather not say it, but I think this commission has wasted a lot of time and effort for a plan that’s doomed in Phoenix. (There’s some hope for Tempe and Glendale.)

I think it made a major mistake in thinking it could ever get 13 elementary districts and the citywide high school district in Phoenix to agree on anything, to say nothing of unifying into one mass. It had a far better chance, I believe, when it proposed five districts in Phoenix – I doubt voters would have passed all of them, but I’m betting they would have approved some.

So while after the November election we may see some unified school districts in rural Arizona, I’m not holding my breath for the schools in Phoenix. And that’s a shame.