Tom Decker said Lori Rieger, the Goodrich woman who says it's time to think outside the school consolidation box, couldn't be more right.

Rieger said continually telescoping small schools one into the other, like the consolidation that will be voted on Tuesday for Goodrich and McClusky, only moves the same declining enrollment problem down the road.

Decker, who manages school finance and organization for the Department of Public Instruction, said schools need more options because eventually distance will outpace good reason in rural North Dakota.

The state has 1,800 fewer students than it did last year, with the biggest loss of students where it's always been, out in the rural small towns. It already has 80 fewer school districts than it did 15 years ago, with districts consolidating at a steady pace of about five every year.

The department is promoting, with much success, the formation of regional service units.

There are nine of them in existence now representing about 90 percent of schools.

Decker sees a day when the regional units could provide administrative and staff support for a cluster of small schools. That support would avert the need both to close the school and ship children ever further from home.

He said schools will have to think about options like block scheduling, where students spend part of a day in one school and part in another. Teachers may have to move to teach those blocks.

Increased use of technology, where some older students attend virtual high schools by computer also could be part of the future.

The "one size fits all" model won't work much longer, if it even still is, he said.

"I've been saying we don't have a lot of time," Decker said. "We'll be under 90,000 students in a couple of years."