In the end, Center Area school board members who had stalled a consolidation with neighboring Monaca for six months finally moved ahead with the merger on a unanimous vote Thursday night.

Surprisingly, the Monaca board that had backed the merger from the start approved the consolidation the same night -- but on a split vote.

Monaca board member Sherri Weber voted against a resolution that outlined a compromise between the two boards.

She said she did not approve of the changes made to the original plan, and did not like the fact that they were negotiated only by the merger committees -- not the full boards.

"This is just Center's back-door way of getting all the kids up in Center schools and not using Monaca High School," she said.

Roxanne DiTommaso voted against the resolution as well, saying it should have been more specific about the eventual high school alignment.

The other five members at the Monaca meeting, however, approved the resolution.

"It's not my ideal either," said Mike Halama, board vice president and merger committee member, "but my impression was that it was either this or no merger."

The resolution asks the state Board of Education to move forward with the official consolidation process. The board will advertise its intent to act on the districts' consolidation applications and will take written comments and hold public hearings. The board could act on the applications in September.

District representatives will meet with state Education Secretary Gerald Zahorchak July 10. They also are trying to schedule a meeting of the two boards' merger committees before then.

The compromise behind these moves means the districts officially will consolidate July 1, 2009, and will launch merged elementary classes for the 2009-2010 year. The administrations, business offices, food service, transportation and custodial services would merge at the same time.

The middle schools and high schools would merge a year later.

The delayed middle school/high school merger was key to the compromise, because the use of Monaca's high school building was a sticking point between the two boards.

The Monaca board was committed to the original plan, which was to use its high school as a middle school and convert Center's middle school/high school complex into a high school. But the Center board, with a new five-member majority elected last year, was not happy with that plan, and got the state to agree to delay the process.

After several months of virtual silence, the Center board members produced a plan to close all of Monaca's schools and transport middle school and high school children to Center. The Monaca board objected, saying the plan would overcrowd Center's high school complex and hamper education.

The compromise resolution calls for an independent study to be done on the middle school and high school facilities to help the merged school board decide what to do in 2010.

The two consultants who worked on the consolidation plan previously both favored the original plan, as did the superintendents of both districts. But Ms. DiTommaso was worried that the compromise would pave the way for a carefully selected consultant to offer the answers that the Center board majority wants.

"If you look long enough and hard enough you can find a consultant to say anything you want," she said.

Mr. Halama noted, however, that the new district will start with an 18-member board -- 9 from each district. And that board will be the one that makes the decision on what to do with high school and middle school.

"Our votes will mean as much as anyone else's," he said.

At least two members of the Center board -- Charlene Kosmal and Rob Gradisek, the two holdovers from the previous board -- favor the original plan. A new study could change things, of course, but as of now, proponents of the original plan would have at least an 11-7 majority on the new, merged board.

And Mel Mikulich, a board member and merger committee member, noted that at the very worst, former Monaca board members would have half the votes on the new board. "We can make sure we are protecting ourselves," he said.

At Center's meeting, which was held an hour later, there was more of a focus on what would come next. Board member Ben Fratangelisaid he'd like the board to meet with Gov. Ed Rendell and other state officials "sooner rather than later" to start dealing with issues like elections, budgeting and the mercantile tax.

The mercantile tax is assessed in Center but not in Monaca. Under current law, a consolidated school district would not be able to assess the tax at all -- a $300,000 revenue hit. The Center board is looking to the state to revise the law or somehow make up the shortfall.

The elections are an issue because if the mergers go through, there will be two boards at the time of the primary and one new board at the time of the general election.

Budgeting is an issue because districts must approve budgets June 30 of each year, but will not be able to vote on a combined budget until July 1 when the two boards become one.

Both problems can be addressed, but it will most likely take some tweaking of the law to do so.