School consolidation simply has to happen.

The real question is which high school in the Warren County School District will be closed. Last week’s school board meeting featured supporters of Youngsville High School arguing to keep that school open and to close Eisenhower instead.

There is a good case for keeping Youngsville High School open – it’s more centrally located in the county, there is more in Youngsville than there is in the area surrounding Eisenhower and faster emergency response times.

But there is one key argument against keeping Youngsville that didn’t come up at last week’s board meeting. Youngsville is on the block because there hasn’t been as much renovation there in the recent past as there has been at the district’s other schools. If Eisenhower closes, Warren County taxpayers will be paying millions of dollars for a school building that is no longer open because remediation payments that are part of the Qualified Zone Academy Bond program get drastically higher if there aren’t enough students in the building. District officials don’t think using Eisenhower for kindergarten through eighth grades will meet the attendance threshold required by the QZAB program.

In the end, the decision over which school to close has to be governed by both education and economics, not education or economics. It’s an important distinction. Every dollar that goes to what is basically a violation of the terms of the district’s renovation loans is a dollar that isn’t being used to educate children. Every dollar spent needlessly on anything but teachers, textbooks, technology and programs is a dollar wasted on the education of students.

Keeping Youngsville open to pay a financial penalty to close Eisenhower makes little financial sense – which means it makes no educational sense, either.