The legal process of organizing a central school district is described in Chapter 820 of the Laws of 1947 (Article 37, Sections 1801-1808 of the new Education Law which replaced the earlier compilation of 1909).
Previous statutes governing the centralization process were Chapter 6 of the Laws of 1944 (which permitted city and village school districts of up to 5,000 population to form central school districts) and Chapter 55 of the Laws of 1914 (which first provided for the formation of "Central Rural Schools"). School centralization files previous to 1944 are retained by Counsel's Office, State Education Department; these presumably date back to 1924, when the first Central Rural School District was organized. Comprehensive tables of common, union free, village, and other special school districts and of existing and recommended central school districts may be found in the "Master Plan for School District Reorganization in New York State" (Albany, 1947; Legislative Document no. 25), prepared for the Joint Legislative Committee on the State Education System (known as the "Rapp Committee"). An updated version under the same title appeared in 1958, published by the Advisory Committee on the Master Plan for School District Reorganization.
From the description of School district centralization files, 1944-1962. (New York State Archives). WorldCat record id: 79783889
