School consolidation actually destroyed our parish. All the communities that invested in their local schools never bought in and moved their kids to private or out of parish schools. A large portion moved out period. Towns like Baskin, Gilbert, Fort and Ward III all had a school to rally around and once that was gone they dissipated. Richland has a fractured school system with two good schools, one ok and one bad. My wife teaches at Mangham so our kids are there and they have a lot of what I had growing up in Baskin. Mangham is top notch. They just did 12 million in renovations including an indoor football facility and locker rooms that even TECH would kill for. Delhi Charter is a good school but out of reach of the School Board, so they have had the Feds called on them many times.
Parish wide voting would be ok here in Franklin. You have two factions now. Winnsboro City and the Rest of Franklin. If there were a consolidation, a lot of redundancy would be replaced with newer and more important stuff. The reason it won't happen is as you discussed. City vs Parish. The City has shrunk and the parish has grown, but its still an everyday fight. I would say voting base is 67% Parish to 33% City.