You may have heard this story before. In fact, I wrote a nearly identical sentence around this time last year.

But enrollment keeps falling as staffing levels rise. Since 2018-19, the last year before the pandemic, student enrollment is down 1.4 million (a 2.8% decrease) while employment is up by 479,000 (a gain of 7.3%).

Part of the staffing gains comes as the result of schools adding 90,000 teacher jobs. Combined with declining enrollment numbers, that has allowed most states and districts to effectively lower their teacher-to-student ratios.

However, most of the employment gains are not coming from classroom teachers. In raw numbers, from 2018-19 to 2024-25 schools added 389,000 non-teaching jobs.

The gains are widespread across staffing categories. The numbers of district administrators and support staffers are up 25.9% and 16.9%, respectively. But so are school-based roles including paraprofessionals (up 16.6%) and guidance counselors (up 12.2%). To help address student attendance and mental health needs, schools have also added 22.4% more support service staff, which NCES defines as employees “who nurture but do not instruct students” and includes “attendance officers; staff providing health, speech pathology, audiology or social services; and supervisors of the preceding staff; coaches, athletic advisers and athletic trainers.”

Only two categories of school employees, librarians and media support staff, did not see an increase over this six-year time period. That continues a over the last few decades as schools employ fewer full-time librarians.

Analysts like myself and of a fiscal cliff once the infusion of federal COVID relief funds, appropriated between March 2020 and March 2021, stopped flowing. That money is long gone now, and yet schools continue to hire. Were we all wrong?

We were certainly off on the timing. Back in 2022, when I was part of the team at the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University, we a “bloodletting” in the 2024-25 school year. As I write this in early 2026, with schools continuing to add staff, that projection looks wildly overblown.

One reason we got the call wrong is that we underestimated how much governments were using their one-time federal funds to shore up funds and build up their budget reserves. More importantly, the broader economy has better than many experts anticipated.
But perhaps we were just too early. After all, the fundamentals have not changed. Because schools are largely funded based on how many students they serve, lower enrollments will translate into lower revenue totals. And by hiring more people and salaries, districts have committed themselves to much higher personnel costs. These trends cannot continue to move in opposite directions forever. 

Meanwhile, while the NCES employment figures cited above are the most accurate measure of total staff time available in schools, they take time to collect. The Bureau of Labor Statistics collects monthly data on the total number of employees in a given industry or sector. That information comes out faster, and the latest numbers that public school employment may be starting to plateau. 

For now, there’s still no sign of a peak or cliff in either data source, but what happens next will largely depend on the direction of the broader economy.  

Public schools added 121,000 employees last year, even as they served 110,000 fewer students.

This is a continuation of recent trends. In per-student terms, public schools have hit new all-time staffing highs in each of the last three years.

����Ӱ��’s art and technology director, Eamonn Fitzmaurice, and I have been following these trends and mapping out how they’re changing across the country. We’ve now updated our charts through the 2023-24 school year. Click on the map below to see what's happening in your community. 

Student/Teacher Ratio Growth

As in previous years, we screened out very small districts and those without sufficient data (marked in black). That allowed us to examine staffing and enrollment trends for over 9,500 districts, comprising 92% of K-12 students nationwide. We then compared the teacher and student counts from 2023-24 — the most recent available — with the same figures for 2016-17. 

About one-quarter of districts had fewer teachers per student last year than they did seven years earlier. Those are shaded in orange or yellow. Districts in Alaska, Nevada and especially Florida are predominantly orange on the map, meaning they have higher student-to-teacher ratios than they did before the pandemic.

But many more districts are shaded blue or gray, meaning they serve fewer — or a lot fewer — students per teacher than they did seven years earlier. Overall, three-quarters of districts fell into one of these categories.

At the most extreme are places where student enrollment declined while the district added staff. There were almost 3,000 districts in this category. Chicago, for example, lost 55,000 students while adding 4,200 teachers. Fairfax County, in Virginia, lost 7,000 students but added almost 700 new teachers.

Slightly less extreme are districts that shrunk their staff counts, but not as fast as they lost students. For example, Santa Ana Unified in California reduced its teacher count by 14%, but it suffered a 30% decline in student enrollment. Similarly, San Antonio, Texas, reduced its teacher count by 7% as student enrollment fell 15%.

Another group of districts gained students, but they increased their teacher counts even faster. Chesterfield County in Virginia served 7% more students with 22% more teachers. Also in Virginia, Loudon County added 27% more teachers to serve 4% more students.

Thanks to an infusion of $190 billion in federal relief funds, schools have been on a hiring spree over the last few years. You can visibly see the effects of the federal money in some of the district charts. For example, before the pandemic, Los Angeles Unified was reducing its teacher count pretty much in line with its declining enrollment. But with the infusion of federal (and state) funds, Los Angeles kept staffing levels constant despite further enrollment declines. Gwinnett County in Georgia shows a similar bifurcated trend. Its staffing and enrollment lines were moving in tandem until the federal funds drove a rapid increase in hiring.

Two teams of highly regarded researchers found that the federal funds helped boost student achievement, and the staffing gains are surely part of that story. But policymakers should be worried that the elevated hiring levels won’t be sustainable without new investments.

As a hypothetical, I looked at what might happen if districts were forced to go back to the staffing ratios they had in 2018-19. In that scenario, public schools across the country would need to lay off the equivalent of 156,000 teachers (512,000 staff members overall). Large districts like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Gwinnett County, Dallas and Philadelphia would all need to lay off 10% or more of their teaching staff.  

Cuts of this magnitude are not on the immediate horizon. State investments in public education to grow last year, and many were able to build up their reserve funds or frontload some purchases like textbooks or equipment over the last few years. into those savings allow some districts to temporarily painful cuts.  

But a paper from the looked at district budget expenditures to estimate how many educator jobs were funded solely by federal COVID aid. They found that, in Washington state alone, roughly 8,400 teachers were hired with the federal funds.

Now that that money is gone, thousands of educators' jobs are at risk. Districts will either need to reduce staff counts or find other ways to pay them.

FEV Tutor, a chat-based, virtual tutoring firm with contracts in districts from California to Florida alerted staff on Saturday that efforts to raise more money or find a buyer had failed. CEO Reed Overfelt cited “worse-than-expected company performance” in his message to employees.

Some districts promptly alerted families about the interruption in services. The Henrico County Public Schools in Virginia referred parents to other tutors, including teachers, “to minimize the impact of FEV’s closure.” The Ector County Independent School District in Texas asked its other provider, Air Tutors, if it could take on the 2,000 students FEV left behind. 

“We found this all out on Sunday,” said Ector spokesman Michael Adkins. “We’ll have to work very quickly to change things over, but as of today, we are expecting we will be able to find a virtual tutor for all of our kids.”

‘Too fast, too quickly’

While districts and other tutoring providers might be able to cobble solutions together, FEV’s demise is one of the more visible early signs of what school finance experts warned would happen when nearly $190 billion in pandemic relief funds ran out. Districts have less money to spend on vendor contracts, leaving companies that were in high demand a year ago having to rethink their futures. Those that expanded at a rapid clip, like FEV Tutor, could be particularly vulnerable. 

“We saw what you would expect with large government programs — a lot of folks rushing out with various models,” said Adam Newman, founder and managing partner of Tyton Partners, a consulting firm. “A lot of those organizations grew too fast, too quickly.”

With district contracts in at least 30 states and an estimated value of over $40 million, FEV Tutor was an “early innovator in providing virtual tutoring services” through an on-demand, chat-based platform, Newman said.  With customers including the , and school districts, the company gave tutors access to an AI coach and engaged in innovative contracts in which tutors earned higher rates when students showed greater improvement. 

They were “massive players” in the industry, and when districts started spending their  relief funds , FEV was “very well-positioned to win all these district [contracts],” added John Failla, founder and CEO of Pearl, a company that helps districts manage tutoring programs. “They scaled up like crazy.”

But while its closing was unexpected, the financial reality that caused it was not. 

A year ago, one expert noted that investments in ed tech had dropped back to pre-pandemic levels. Even in late 2022, “rising inflation, interest rates, geopolitical crises and belt-tightening brought an end to the copious amounts of capital that defined the pandemic,” Tony Wan, head of platform at Reach Capital. Districts were already “preparing the chopping block for tools and services” that were nice to have but no longer necessary. 

Some districts also just prefer to manage their own tutoring programs. 

“If you look at the districts [that] have succeeded in scaling tutoring the most, all of those have owned a lot of the process internally,” said Liz Cohen, policy director at FutureEd, a Georgetown University . She cited Baltimore City, Guilford County, North Carolina, and Nashville as examples. “Districts are increasingly focused on the relational part of tutoring. It can be virtual or in person, but it’s someone who has a face and a name and that the kid knows.” 

The surprise isn’t that FEV Tutor is a “casualty” of the fiscal cliff, she said. “But certainly, nobody expected them to shut down on a Saturday in the middle of the school year when they have active customers and employees.”

FEV Tutor did not respond to an email requesting comment. A red banner at the top of its home page says the company “ceased operations” on Jan. 25. 

The news clearly confused some parents. In response to an announcement on Facebook, some families in Harford County, Maryland, blamed the district and wondered if officials knew weeks ago that services would end so suddenly. Another wrote, “There’s clearly a mismanagement of money somewhere.” 

On the district’s , officials apologized for the disruption, saying they could not guarantee they would be able to “find or implement a comparable solution at this time.” 

Marguerite Roza, the director of Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab, said she hasn’t seen other pandemic-era vendors face such a dramatic end, but predicted “there will be more in the coming months.”

Return on investment

Software industry veterans Anirudh Baheti and Ryan Patenaude founded FEV Tutor in 2008, well before the pandemic. According to GovSpend, a data company, annual sales didn’t top $1 million until 2018. By 2021, as districts began spending relief funds, sales jumped to over $6.3 million. 

In 2022, Alpine Investors, a private equity firm, acquired the company, and Patenaude said in a press release that he was excited about the “next stage of FEV’s growth.” Jim Tormey, an executive with Alpine, stepped in as CEO until Overfelt took over in 2023. 

FEV’s work in Ector and Duval County, Florida, was also part of an innovative arrangement known as outcomes-based contracting. The company didn’t just deliver tutoring; it promised better results for more money, and offered to take a pay cut if students didn’t make progress. 

Such deals piqued the tutoring world’s interest in recent years as policymakers increasingly called for evidence that relief funds weren’t going to waste. Cohen, who featured FEV’s work last year in a FutureEd , wrote in a commentary that the concept could help ensure districts “get the best return on their investment and help build a culture of performance in public education.”

FEV Tutor further evolved last year when it announced a new AI-enhanced platform, Tutor CoPilot. The tool makes tutors more effective by giving them guiding questions to ask students. In a , the National Student Support Accelerator at Stanford University, which studies tutoring models, found that when less-experienced tutors used the AI support, student math scores increased an average of 9 percentage points. 

But that breakthrough apparently wasn’t enough to turn business around.

In his note to the company, Overfelt said he and the board of directors had “explored every possible avenue to secure FEV Tutor’s future,” but that talks with additional investors had “reached their end.”

Since FEV was on a pay-as-you-go contract, Adkins, in Ector, said the district wasn’t worried about losing money.

But FEV employees are suddenly out of a job. A customer service manager who once taught in the Las Vegas-area Clark County schools posted on LinkedIn that she was . And Jen Mendelsohn, CEO of Braintrust Tutors, said she spent Monday interviewing former FEV employees.

Many, she said, “have long-term district relationships nationwide and are looking for ways to ensure academic continuity for their students.” 

On a per-student basis, that means public school staffing levels once again climbed to new all-time highs.

The NCES numbers are expressed in terms of full-time equivalents (FTEs), which are adjusted based on the number of hours worked by part-time staff. The FTE numbers are the most accurate  measure of total staff time available, but they take time to collect. Separately, the Bureau of Labor Statistics collects raw headcount numbers on the total number of employees in a given industry or sector. Those data come out faster, and the latest numbers that public schools have continued hiring this year.

Despite all the continued attention to supposed , the truth is that schools employ more educators than ever. At the same time that student enrollments fell by 1.3 million (a decline of 2.5%) over the last five years, schools added the equivalent of 55,000 teachers.

As a result, 45 states and the District of Columbia have effectively lowered their student-to-teacher ratio over the last five years. In most places, the changes are small, but 13 states — Colorado, New York, Michigan, Massachusetts, California, New Mexico, Virginia, Illinois, Mississippi, Indiana, Utah, Oregon and Louisiana — reduced their ratios by more than one student per teacher. Only Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Alaska and Florida had more students per teachers last year than they did going into the pandemic. (We’re currently working on updating our map showing the same trends at the district level.)

But it’s not just teachers: Over the last five years, schools have added 171,000 full-time staff members in a variety of roles. If you walked into a school today, you’d find more paraprofessionals and administrators. Schools also have more guidance counselors, psychologists and support service staff, which NCES defines as employees “who nurture, but do not instruct students” and includes “attendance officers; staff providing health, speech pathology, audiology or social services; and supervisors of the preceding staff; coaches, athletic advisers and athletic trainers.”

Only three categories of school employees — administrative support staff, librarians and media support staff — did not see an increase over this five-year time period. The largest of these is administrative support staff, people whose primary responsibilities are to assist principals or department chairs. The number of librarians and media support staff also fell, part of a over the last few decades as fewer schools employ fewer full-time people in their libraries.

This may feel like déjà vu all over again to readers who have followed these trends closely since the pandemic. But with districts using the last of their COVID relief funds late last year, it will soon become clear whether they can sustain the investments they’ve been making. There’s no sign of the peak yet, but the fiscal cliff is getting closer.

The city of Providence has halted all discretionary spending and imposed a hiring freeze to comply with a court mandate to fund the city’s public schools — with the potential for cuts to municipal services and even a property tax hike, Mayor Brett Smiley told reporters gathered in his office Tuesday.

The warning about tough choices ahead comes three days after a Providence Superior Court judge (RIDE), which is withholding millions in state aid to Providence until the city appropriates local dollars to fund its public schools, which have been under state control for the past five years.

“The decision the court handed down put the city’s finances at risk,” Smiley said. “And we’re going to have to make very difficult decisions in the days ahead.”

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That could include cuts to all grant programs for the community libraries, housing support, and parks programs. Smiley said his office would also consider rolling back police patrols at PVDFest and other holiday celebrations.

“That will all have to stop,” he said.

Rhode Island Superior Court Judge Jeffrey A. Lanphear on Friday upheld a request from Education Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green to state Treasurer James Diossa to withhold $8.5 million in state car tax payments from the city, claiming Providence owed nearly $30 million to the district under the that authorized RIDE’s 2019 takeover of the Providence Public School Department.

A decision on how much the city must pay was originally scheduled for Wednesday morning but was postponed to Nov. 20. The City Council’s Committee on Finance was scheduled to meet to reallocate $1.5 million in federal COVID relief funds to help cover school budget shortfalls at its Tuesday meeting, but postponed that part of its agenda to Monday, Nov. 18.

Michelle Moreno Silva, spokesperson for Diossa’s office, declined to comment on the Superior Court’s ruling.

“Our role here is very minimal,” she said in a phone interview. “We just hold the money.”

Smiley told reporters Tuesday that the city may have to conduct layoffs and furlough additional employees — which he said would save the city $200,000 per day. Also possible, he said, the city could impose a mid-year tax hike, something it can’t do without General Assembly approval.

“If legislation is introduced, it will be thoroughly reviewed through the public committee hearing process,” Senate spokesperson Greg Pare said in an email.

Last week’s Superior Court ruling intensified the battle over funding obligations to the district. The feud went public in early October after Smiley to reveal an “ultimatum” made by Providence Superintendent Javier Montañez asking for $10.9 million for the district.

Montañez warned Smiley that without the cash from the city, the district would have to cut winter and spring sports, along with revoking students’ Rhode Island Public Transit Authority bus passes.

Smiley responded with a $1 million offer the following day, promising to use money from a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreement recently struck with Lifespan Corporation, plus a parking agreement with the Rhode Island School of Design. The City Council promised to repurpose $1.5 million from its share of federal pandemic relief money.

But Smiley said the combined offer was not accepted as of Tuesday.

“All of this is in the context of irresponsible spending from the school department,” he said Tuesday. “We all know there was going to be a fiscal cliff when the federal COVID aid expired and they did nothing to plan for it other than to send us the bill and expect Providence taxpayers would foot that bill.”

Smiley blamed Infante-Green’s administration at RIDE for a lack of collaboration, adding the city would help to instill discipline and oversight on state spending.

“It is clear the commissioner views her ability to run our schools as one without checks and balances,” he said. “Cooperation is a one-way street with her.”

Smiley and City Council President Rachel Miller called on the state to put the district back on local control — something the Rhode Island Council on Elementary and Secondary Education declined to do , instead extending the takeover through 2027.

“Our city is not a bank for a state-controlled experiment,” Miller said. “After four years, it has become abundantly clear the state takeover is not working to promote the collaboration and the transparent decision making that our students need.”

RIDE spokesperson Victor Morente said it was a lack of city resources and underperformance that led the state to take over the school district in the first palace.

“City leaders have repeatedly stated they are ready to prove to the State that they are prepared to regain local control, but their budget priorities say otherwise,” Morente said in a statement.

The budget feud led outside of City Hall on Tuesday.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Rhode Island Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janine L. Weisman for questions: info@rhodeislandcurrent.com.

Financial dysfunction is plaguing many city school districts.

is the most concerning. The district’s current $300 million budget gap is set to triple next year, which isn’t surprising since enrollment dropped 10% over six years as the district added staff. Now, it won’t close schools, won’t reduce the workforce and is being told by the mayor to give in to union demands for big raises. How would the math work? The mayor wants the district to take out a short-term, high-interest loan. Oh, and the city and district still need to work out how to .

is a close second. Two years ago, leaders agreed to a costly labor agreement that they admitted would require major cuts. But then they didn’t make those cuts. Instead, leaders exhausted all reserves and are borrowing money they’ll have to pay back by 2026. What’s the plan for the $100 million budget deficit? None yet. 

Why are financial crises suddenly common among large urban districts? Federal relief funds are part of the issue. Despite warnings that the money was temporary, many city districts used those one-time funds for salary raises and new staff hires.  

Some never had a plan for what would happen next. For example, when the federal relief funds ended, leaders in seemed surprised by a glaring $143 million hole in their budget forecast.

Of course, it’s never easy to cut labor. But avoidance makes it worse over time. In a recent hostage-like negotiation, the superintendent demanded $10 million from the city within 24 hours or the district would start issuing pink slips.

Falling birth rates are another factor. Over the long term, fewer kids means fewer dollars and a need for fewer schools. Closing schools is tough work, and many city districts especially aren’t up for it. In , schools are down to capacity. After pressing pause on its school closures, now has until Dec. 15 to come up with an alternative or face a potential .

Sometimes it’s basic financial mismanagement. For months, , inadvertently overpaid its staff, which, not surprisingly, has created a drain on the budget.

got behind on filing its financial reports and ended up with a state-imposed “corrective action plan” that involved repayment of $43 million. After the state imposed an external financial audit, the district has since .

In , where Las Vegas is located, “miscalculations” keep shifting the budget gap by tens of millions. And because New Orleans dragged its feet on surfacing a $20 million miscalculation of local tax revenue, each of its schools must cut some six or more staff midyear.

In St. Louis, the issue appears to be an unwarranted spending spree by a newly hired — and now fired — superintendent.

All these financial messes are leaving kids in the lurch. The dysfunction destabilizes the district, often leaving little time to make consequential decisions like staffing cuts or school closures. Employees are demoralized. Trust in the system erodes. Families with means pursue other options. Most of all, the financial upheaval takes all eyes off the district’s primary responsibility: student learning.

What is it about city school systems that predisposes them to such financial dysfunction? One obvious factor is that leaders are underprepared to manage complex financial operations that can involve upward of a billion dollars — or more — in public funds. Coming off a that outpaced inflation, few of today’s leaders have any experience with making hard budget tradeoffs. As forecasts change, leaders ignore the signs, stall or, in the case of , pass off major budget-cutting to a task force of 40 volunteers.  

Another reality is the intense, unbalanced political dynamics common in today’s urban centers. Powerful labor groups make unaffordable demands. Vocal parents resist program reductions or school closures. Some elected board members reverse planned cuts, imagining they’re defending constituents from the heartless bean counters in the district’s finance office. The good finance leaders flee the turmoil. Eventually, the district runs out of beans.

Strong district leadership should be an antidote. Leaders need to be , sharing options and explaining financial tradeoffs. They need to make hard choices, laser-focused on what’s best for students. They need to safeguard their schools’ financial integrity, ensuring that today’s decisions don’t erode the education of tomorrow’s students.

Missing in action are states. Typically, legislatures throw up their hands and bemoan local control. Many are wary of state takeover policies in part because of their of impacts on students.

But there are . Requiring multi-year budget forecasts and minimum levels of fiscal reserves are a start. States can then adopt policies that get triggered when districts overspend and deplete those reserves, each with the goal of helping the district get back on track. With some 80% to 90% of expenses going to personnel, states could mandate that labor contracts be reopened for renegotiation. They could appoint a financial auditor to communicate honestly about district finances. Also triggered could be a requirement that the board and leaders undergo finance training and hold more frequent meetings until budget gaps are addressed.

Standing by while finances erode further in these urban districts is unfair to the many students who depend on their leaders to manage the billions being deployed for their education. Continuing to look the other way will make things worse. City kids need the adults to figure this out.

The conventional wisdom is that shuttering aging buildings with few students makes economic sense. But the economics of school closures have been thorny in Chicago, where officials closed 50 of the city’s 684 district schools in 2013. Eleven years later, savings have been less than expected, while the closings have proven disruptive to students and communities. They also carry economic consequences for the city and remain politically radioactive: The school board recently approved a until 2027. 

The Chicago experience is a cautionary tale for today’s policymakers contemplating school shutdowns.

When the 50 schools were shuttered, primarily in low-income communities serving students of color, city officials estimated the district would save $1 billion over 10 years: $560 million on building repairs and $43 million a year in salaries for principals and support staff.

But following accusations by parents, activists and local elected officials opposing the closings that the numbers were inflated, the district its savings estimates downward by 20%, to $438 million. Also that year, WBEZ, the Chicago National Public Radio affiliate, that the district was not accounting for $329 million it borrowed to prepare the schools that were to enroll the displaced students. That borrowing cost $25 million annually, starting in 2015 and continuing until 2045, for a total of $750 million.

Then, a 2023 by the Chicago Sun-Times and WBEZ found that the labor savings for employing fewer principals, assistant principals and school clerks amounted to about $25 million a year, $18 million less annually than projected. 

Beyond the shrinking cost savings, there’s evidence that the closures contributed to the decline of the low-income Black neighborhoods where the schools were located. The Sun-Times and WBEZ analysis looked at census data and found that Black neighborhoods that experienced a permanent school closure in 2013 subsequently lost population at three times the rate of other Chicago Black neighborhoods. Census tracts with a majority Black population that included closed schools lost 9.2% of their residents between 2013 and 2018, the news organizations found, compared with 3.2% in Black census tracts with schools that did not close.

Those statistics don’t prove that the school shutdowns accelerated declines in neighborhoods that were already depopulating. And charter schools in those communities may have encouraged some Black families to stay put, slowing the decline. But having a school near home is a draw for families, especially those with elementary school students. And in a struggling neighborhood, the closing of a school can be the last straw for families who are considering moving away. Notably, 49 of the 50 closed schools were elementary schools. 

Shuttering the schools didn’t improve academic outcomes for their students. A 2018 from the UChicago Consortium on School Research found that students from closed schools were absent and suspended at the same rates as peers in their new schools. But they had lower math scores for at least four years after transferring. And the Sun-Times and WBEZ analysis showed that they graduated from high school at slightly lower rates than students in schools with similar demographics that didn’t close. A 2023 of school closings in the San Antonio Independent School District yielded similar results: Attendance, grades and state test scores didn’t improve after students transferred to their new schools.

Nor did then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel and district officials renovate and reopen the closed schools as other community assets, as they pledged to do by the end of 2014. A large-scale sale fell through, as did an effort to have local aldermen manage sales. As of May 2023, of the closed school buildings had been successfully reopened for other purposes. Many of the others have become graffiti-covered eyesores. 

By contrast, Kansas City Public Schools developed a community-focused approach to the 30 school buildings it closed in 2011. The district hired an urban planner with experience in community development, who held public meetings and tours before putting each building on the market. Each time a serious offer was made, more meetings were held. The district has sold 22 buildings, has one under contract, demolished five and is holding three for future use. 

School districts can’t ignore the inefficiencies of underenrolled schools, especially when they are faltering academically. But the aftermath of Chicago’s school closings a decade ago points to the importance of a clear-eyed approach that prioritizes public transparency and takes into account the financial, academic and community consequences of closings. It suggests the need to balance cost savings with preserving the vitality of neighborhoods and the need for resources to support struggling students wherever they attend school. 

One-third of parents recently surveyed by reported their child care costs rose over the past year, following the expiration of the first batch of pandemic-era child care funding. Among parents of kids under age 5, that number is even higher (37%). 

Just over half of parents with very young children reported dealing with at least one significant challenge with child care over the past year, including unexpected provider closures and trouble finding child care options.

“This is all a result of this decade of disinvestment,” said Melissa Boteach, the center’s vice president for Income Security and Child Care/Early Learning. “And the pandemic laid bare and exacerbated that, but ultimately to solve the problem we need not just a patchwork to help address the cliff that we’re about to drive off of, but long-term and sustained, robust public funding that actually builds a child care system that serves families and the economy.”

The expiring funds were part of the 2021 , a $1.9 trillion economic stimulus package, which included roughly $39 billion in direct support for child care relief. 

Marking the largest investment since World War II, the funding was split into two buckets: The first $24 billion primarily went to providers to help them stay afloat during and after the COVID shutdowns and expired last September. On Monday, the remaining $15 billion expired, which provided additional funding to the existing Child Care and Development Block Grant program, the primary federal grant program that allocates flexible funding to states, allowing them to provide subsidized child care to low-income families with children under 13.

This funding helped to stabilize 220,000 child care programs, impacting 10 million children and over a million families, according to a of federal data by the National Women’s Law Center and The organizations also found that 29% of families faced higher tuition in the month after the first expiration of funding last September, with to affordable care.

This week’s deadline in particular will hit states’ child care systems, according to Boteach, who said, “Even in anticipation of this money expiring, some states are starting to roll back those improvements, which again means that — particularly for families eligible for a subsidy — they’re going to see anything from growing wait lists to higher co-pays to a shrinking supply, because providers aren’t getting reimbursed at the rate needed to afford to stay in business.”

Susan Gale Perry, CEO of , described the situation in Nevada, where eligibility for subsidized child care programs is returning to pre-pandemic criteria as relief funds wind down. “[This] means that families who have the least are going to need to be paying more for child care,” she said.

Across the country, she added, states were able to implement creative solutions with the help of pandemic relief revenue. “The bright spots that we’re seeing are states that are continuing to pick up some of those great ideas and move forward with them using state funds. So we know we need a solution that includes a combination of federal and state and private and parent fees to really make child care work the way it needs to for this country.”

The latest survey was administered to better understand the ongoing impact of these expirations. It was designed by the Law Center and administered by Morning Consult between Sept. 13 and 15, reaching 4,443 adults nationally, 970 of whom are parents with children 13 years old or younger and 413 of whom have kids 5 or younger. The margin of error is plus or minus 1.5% and larger for subgroups. 

Over one-third of parents surveyed reported some knowledge of the expiring funds and a majority of parents (61%) expressed concern about Monday’s deadline. Black parents were particularly impacted, with 71% reporting they are very or somewhat concerned.

A plurality of parents (42%) said that candidates running for office are not talking enough about the issue of child care. 

“This is a very big-line item in families’ budgets,” Boteach said, “and if they’re not hearing from candidates about what their specific plans are, that’s a liability for those candidates.” 

Despite vastly differing views about how to make parenthood more affordable in this year’s presidential race, both Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican vice president candidate JD Vance have supported of the Child Tax Credit. Harris’s economic agenda includes a proposal to raise the credit to as much as $3,600 and $6,000 in a child’s first year. Vance said he wants to raise the credit to $5,000 but opposes government spending on child care, arguing children benefit from having a parent at home with them.

Boteach noted that yesterday’s funding dropoff comes amid rising wages nationally for low-paid sectors. To remain competitive, child care employers would need to raise wages, even as they lose funding, saddling parents with the increased costs, she said. 

Ultimately, she noted, the costs of the “broken market” of child care “are borne entirely by parents — in the form of higher fees — and providers — in the form of poverty wages.” 

And often it’s women in the workforce who pay the ultimate price, she added: “Women are 90% of the early education workforce, and it’s disproportionately Black, brown and immigrant women. Women are [also] the ones who are more likely to be pushed out of the labor market when they can’t find affordable child care options.”

School districts had to make similar calculations with the financial windfalls they received in the wake of COVID-19. Known officially as the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Funds — — $190 billion was disbursed by Congress to schools and districts in three installments from March 2020 to March 2021.

It was the largest one-time infusion of federal funds ever, and the money officially expires at the end of September. So what have researchers learned about ESSER, and what should it mean for future federal investments?

Any evaluation of the ESSER funding has to start by defining its purpose. Was it intended as a financial lifeline for a large and important public-service sector in the midst of a turbulent economic climate? Was it supposed to nudge schools to reopen their doors for in-person instruction? Or was it meant to help re-engage students and help them address learning loss?

Congress essentially took an “all of the above” approach. It did specify that 20% of the last round of ESSER funding be directed toward addressing learning loss, but the allowable activities were extremely broad and inclusive. Without a clear purpose or goal, districts could — and did — spend their money in wildly different ways.

The result is that no one really knows how districts spent their ESSER money. Marguerite Roza and the team at did yeoman’s work of collecting what spending data they could find from state reports, but it’s far from a comprehensive story.

When AASA, The School Superintendents Association, surveyed its members recently, it that the wide diversity of investment strategies with the ESSER money “does not illustrate or support any additional trends within specific categories.” They found that districts spent the funds on tutoring, summer and afterschool programs, facilities, professional development for teachers, supports for English learners and students with disabilities, early-childhood programs and a host of other activities. At an event marking the survey’s release, the superintendent from Umatilla, Oregon, highlighted her district’s to invest in a cadre of substitute teachers who could be deployed as needed. The superintendent of schools in Fargo, North Dakota, emphasized the large number of initiatives his district launched and that those should be evaluated one by one rather than as a group. 

Congress could have set clearer priorities and set aside funding dedicated to specific initiatives, such as tutoring. But it may have been justified in deferring to local communities. on school finance has found that, in general, additional money helps boost a variety of student outcomes, but there’s still an open debate about funds should be distributed and spent. So flexibility was probably the right bet during a period like COVID.

But without greater clarity on goals, the question of whether ESSER funding worked is hard to answer.

Did the program provide a financial lifeline to schools and districts in an uncertain economic climate? That answer is an unequivocal yes. The early rounds of funding helped districts for personal protective equipment like masks, upgrade their technology and begin to re-staff schools after COVID layoffs and hiring freezes.

Did ESSER convince districts to reopen their schools? That’s less clear. The first round of funds, which were approved in March 2020, wasn’t enough to help most schools reopen their doors to in-person learning the following fall. And the last round, approved in March 2021, probably came too late to have an effect. According to the , only 7% of districts were fully remote by the time the last round of ESSER passed, and half of all districts remained fully remote or hybrid through the end of that school year.   

Did ESSER boost student outcomes? The early answer to that question appears to be yes, it did lead to meaningful improvements. By identifying districts that happened to get more or less money, two research found that the ESSER funds helped boost outcomes by a similar amount as past financial investments did.

But did ESSER provide the right amount of money? The answer here is yes and no. The “no” side is dominated by practical realities. One-time windfalls are hard to handle, especially in an industry like education, where 85% to 90% of expenditures are tied to salaries and benefits. In a detailed on the ESSER funds, New America’s Zahava Stadler quoted a school business official as saying, “While [it was] fantastic that schools had these resources to be able to get through COVID and then try to recover … those big Title I districts got so much money in such a short amount of time. [It’s] really hard to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on one-time expenditures within that window.”

It’s also hard to ignore the fact that the expiration of the money will likely lead to a fiscal cliff as districts scale back. How bad will that be? One way to estimate it is to note that, according to data compiled by , districts had about $67 billion in ESSER funds left to spend as of one year ago. That money is now all about gone, and the states are not in a position to the gap. This is likely to lead to large program and staffing reductions, which would be destabilizing for schools and bad for kids.

But the other way to look at this question is from the student perspective. It’s fair to conclude that students would likely be far worse off in the absence of the ESSER funds, and they remain so far behind pre-COVID performance levels that researchers estimate it would take an additional $450 billion to $900 billion to get kids fully back on track.

No policymaker is seriously talking about making additional investments on anything close to this sort of scale. But focusing on student learning needs should be the ultimate goal, and that’s a discussion policymakers should be having as the ESSER funds wind down.

Then, the growth machine stalled. California has long seen a large percentage of its residents , but international immigration and high birth rates more than made up for those losses. That formula is no longer working, and this year researcher Hans Johnson found that the number of births per 1,000 California residents was at its lowest level in more than a century. 

Within education, the declines were small at first. But then COVID-19 hit, and the state lost 420,000 public school students in four years. California’s pandemic-era enrollment declines were not just the largest numerically, the 6.7% drop was also the second-largest in percentage terms. 

There’s potentially more bad news in store for California school districts. According to the latest forecast from the federal government, the state is projected to lose another 1 million public school students by 2031. 

If a private-sector business has fewer customers, its revenue will decline proportionally. Public education revenues are broadly linked to enrollment, but the relationship is not as linear. 

There are three main sources of revenue for public schools — local, state and federal. Local funds, which in California make up about one-third of school district , come from property taxes and are not directly tied to student enrollments. Federal formula funds are linked to how many students a district serves, as well as how many of them are low-income or receive special education services. But aid from Washington is so diffuse and such a small part of district budgets that it’s not enough to move the needle, at least in the short run. 

That leaves state funds as the primary area where serving fewer students will affect a district’s budget. Theoretically, state policymakers could decide to spend the same amount of money even if schools enroll fewer kids. That could actually raise per-pupil revenues in districts, but only if they are all losing students equally. 

But enrollment declines have not been universal across or within states. In California, two-thirds of districts suffered an enrollment decline during the pandemic, but that means one-third actually gained students. The biggest loser, in numeric terms, was Los Angeles, which lost 67,000 students (14%) over four years. Other notable losers include Long Beach (down 10%), San Jose (down 15%) and Cupertino (down 22%). 

Where the rubber will really hit the road is in schools with declining enrollments situated within districts that are shrinking overall. Most districts allocate money to schools according to staffing ratios, so a school would get less staff if it served fewer students. 

It turns out that California has a lot of schools with large enrollment declines. When ����Ӱ��’s Linda Jacobson worked with Brookings Institution researchers to run the numbers, they found over 1,400 schools in California that had suffered at least a 20% enrollment decline. Those were particularly concentrated along the Pacific coast, and they are the ones most at risk.

It simply costs more per pupil for districts to offer the same level of services at schools that are partially empty. And, as Marguerite Roza and Ash Dhamani cautioned recently in a for EdSource, this has consequences for the entire district. When districts try to prop up too many underenrolled schools, they eventually have to cut back on “music, electives, AP courses, athletics and other supports” across all their schools. 

To put it in concrete terms, the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University has compiled school-level spending information , and it lets users sort schools across a variety of categories. When I narrowed the search to California elementary schools, almost all the highest-cost schools were small, and likely underenrolled. Meanwhile, almost all of the biggest schools fell below the statewide average in per-pupil spending. 

California school districts received $18 billion in one-time , and that money has allowed districts to operate beyond their means temporarily. But the money expires at the end of September, and then leaders will have to make some painful decisions to more closely align their budgets with the number of students they serve. 

The views expressed here are those of the author. 

The Class of 2024 — students and their schools — began its high school and college experiences dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Social distancing, online learning and uprooted peer connections were markers of an unprecedented, sudden and tumultuous shift in education. In response, in 2020, Congress approved the first of three infusions of , enabling districts to invest in technology, mental health support, infrastructure improvements and greater access to tutoring and enrichment programs. Now, as that $190 billion infusion draws to a , education leaders must plan future budgets without that assistance, and must prioritize responses to voters’ priorities for dealing with new financial constraints.

What are those priorities? Though hot-button issues such as parental rights, book banning and school choice dominated education headlines during the pandemic, an online of 1,300 likely 2024 voters — including parents of school-age children — conducted by The Hunt Institute in summer 2023 found Americans now value very different things. In summarizing the survey’s findings, the institute issued a report titled to bring clarity about what voters agree are the top priorities related to public education. Among those that should guide district and school leaders’ decisions:

Safety

Nearly of voters agree that ensuring schools are free from guns and other physical violence is a top priority. Little learning takes place when students and teachers feel unsafe. Not only did gun violence in schools between 2020-21 and 2021-22, but bullying and unhealthy buildings also . When young people feel unsafe, they are to focus during class than their peers who feel safe — or may skip school altogether. Teachers and staff must be trained to identify warning signs of student disengagement and to employ intervention techniques. But with ESSER money no longer available, states and districts must find local sources of funds. For example, expanded its Behavioral Health Care Professional Matching Grant Program to cover school behavioral health services and provide access to health care for school communities. Wisconsin for school-based mental health programs in its 2019-21 state budget, aiding 120 public school districts with counseling and related services.

High-quality instruction

An overwhelming majority of voters prioritize ensuring that all students have access to well-trained and highly qualified educators and can read at grade level. Some of survey respondents said hiring high-quality teachers is very important, while stressed training and support for educators in the classroom. At a time when nearly of schools had vacancies that went unfilled or were hard to fill in the 2020-21 school year, promising solutions — some started with ESSER funds — are underway. and the District of Columbia are implementing or supporting teacher residencies with promising results. Similarly, Arizona and North Dakota governors issued executive orders creating task forces aimed at identifying promising practices, including data-informed retention programs.

Literacy

Achieving grade-level reading is essential for learning recovery. Though of voters in the survey prioritized literacy, fourth-grade reading scores on the continue to decline. After third grade, students must transition from learning to read to reading to learn, which is crucial for academic success. Fourth-grade reading proficiency correlates to lifetime employment and earning potential — making literacy a priority not only for voters, but for the nation’s economic development.

Research indicates that adults with higher literacy skills are to have better job opportunities and earn higher wages than their less literate peers.

States have aligned legislation with research-based literacy practices. In 2023, implemented policies focused on the science of reading, particularly in teacher training. Research-based literacy instruction benefits not only reading but also math, as the same areas of the brain are for skills in both. For example, high-quality literacy instruction can help students because, as University of Buffalo researcher Christopher McNorgan , the brain’s wiring for reading significantly impacts how it functions in relation to math.

Though federal ESSER funds must be allocated by September, the benefits and new practices that they paid for must continue. The U.S. Department of Education should consider compiling and sharing promising practices begun with ESSER investments, including teaching support, high-dosage tutoring, school safety, mental health and social services integrated with schools, so local policymakers can consider these examples and build on them.  

Education leaders would benefit from using this opportunity to align long-term goals with voter values, ensuring students have access to quality teachers in a safe learning environment so they can gain the skills they will need long after graduation. 

• Title 1: Of all the federal Education Department’s funding streams, Title 1 is the best-known, the largest and the most appropriate for tutoring (although the others are also useful places to look). It was designed to target extra resources to high-need schools, specifically for math and reading. The good news is that a tutor is not needed for every student for every subject, so only a portion of Title 1 dollars is necessary. Tutoring is most important for students struggling with their coursework, including those who are not on track for proficiency in reading by the end of third grade or for by the end of ninth. Students who meet these benchmarks are four times more likely to graduate from high school as those who don’t. Districts should look hard at how they are spending Title 1 dollars to help students reach these two goals, redirecting staff positions or funds to tutoring programs with demonstrable return on investment.
  
• Multi-Tiered Systems of Support: Districts across the nation use Multi-Tiered Systems of Support to target appropriate interventions for students with learning, social, emotional, or behavioral difficulties. Many districts could improve these offerings by using a high-impact tutoring approach, making sure their interventions build relationships between students and educators that motivate, engage and target students’ growth areas using data and high-quality instructional materials. Schools can integrate high-impact tutoring with the funds already being used for MTSS by reallocating resources to more effective approaches.
  
• AmeriCorps: One of the priorities of this 30-year-old program is to support effective tutoring for high-need students. awards tens of millions of dollars in grant funding for tutoring and mentorship in early learning and K-12 schools. Districts can apply directly for federal funds through their State AmeriCorps commissions. These three-year grants can largely cover the costs of tutors and supervisory staff. Districts can also seek vendors that are AmeriCorps partners to provide tutoring, which brings a subsidy from the vendor directly into the district.

•  Work-study: This 60-year-old program enables lower-income students to work their way through college. Of the 20 million undergraduates in the U.S., about 600,000 receive work-study as part of their financial aid packages. This allows colleges to use federal funds to subsidize work by their students. Recent guidance has called on colleges and universities to spend at least 15% of those funds on community-based jobs, and tutoring is among the roles prioritized. With a district as a community partner, a college can .
  
• U.S. Department of Education teacher preparation funds: The 60-year-old is designed to increase the number of well-prepared teachers from diverse backgrounds. The focus is on the various aspects of the teacher preparation pipeline, including the recruitment, support and placement in underresourced schools with underserved students. This fund goes directly to higher ed; districts should partner with local colleges to design a tutor-to-teacher pathway.
  
• U.S. Department of Labor apprenticeship funds: These can support for future teachers. State departments of education can help districts address teacher shortages by strengthening the pathway to the classroom through the real-world experience of tutoring in schools. , for example, has just become a federal apprenticeship provider.

Since school districts often lack the capacity to seek grants or manage compliance requirements, leaders could ask local philanthropies for help. They could also rethink some of their current procedures to save money in the short and long term.

For example, some contracts pay providers based on student hours, not tutor hours. In other words, instead of paying a vendor $25 an hour for a tutor’s time (and overhead), some districts paid $75 for an hour in which that tutor worked with three students. Districts should renegotiate those contracts to pay for tutor time, regardless of how many students were assigned. They should also monitor tutoring implementation and effectiveness in order to make adjustments, maximizing impact; outcomes-based contracts with vendors can help.

And, they can reevaluate the timing of their tutoring programs. 

Offering high-quality tutoring during the school day makes it easier to connect to the kids and teachers, as they’re already in the building, than providing services outside of regular class time; helps cultivate a pipeline of talent entering the education system; and may help stem and reduce dropout rates.

Investing in third-grade literacy and Algebra 1 tutoring specifically makes sound long-term financial sense. Holding onto more kids is not only the right thing to do morally and educationally, but it provides a financial benefit. Allocating $500 to $1,000 per student for high-impact tutoring in grade 9 can yield an average of $15,000 in annual state per-pupil funding for each student who remains in high school for the next three years, until graduation. It is essentially an insurance policy that potentially preserves up to $45,000 in future funding per student, which can sustain tutoring initiatives and support other school needs. 

It is clear that districts have options for sustaining high-impact tutoring programs. Some may require challenging choices and changes, while others will require schools to form partnerships, which takes time and coordination. But if schools are to help students recover from the effects of COVID-related learning interruptions, they will need to focus on the strategies that can provide the strongest outcomes. Schools that make high-impact tutoring a funding priority now will enable their students to succeed for years to come.

COLUMBUS, OHIO –– The dire problems facing Columbus City Schools can be illustrated by comparing two buildings: Como Elementary School and Hamilton STEM Academy. Built as identical schools in 1954, they sit less than 2 miles apart, about 4 miles north of downtown.

Como has never undergone a significant renovation. Original floor tiles that an official said contain asbestos still cover a majority of the school, many of its plexiglass windows are no longer translucent and wires snake through the hallways, crudely affixed to the top of cinder-block walls.

While the building has been retrofitted with air conditioning and a new playground, “We can’t do everything,” admits T. Alex Trevino, the district’s director of capital improvements. In addition to its obvious physical shortcomings, the school, with a capacity of 400 students, has only 243.

Meanwhile, a $3.5 million renovation last year has transformed Hamilton’s 47,000-square-foot building, adding flooring that cuts down on noise, new windows and furniture, and walls full of cubbies with doors that make classrooms look neater. Freshly painted hallways are dotted with inspirational sayings. “The kids are excited about the building. It’s changed the school culture,” says principal Christopher Brady. Still, Hamilton is only two-thirds occupied, with just under 400 students in a building with a capacity of 575.

Six schools, including Hamilton, have undergone extensive renovations, with two more planned this summer. But in a district with 113 schools — most of them built before 1975 — the buildings are deteriorating faster than the city can fix them. The district spends some $544,000 on facilities and maintenance for each school every year, $86,000 more than the national average.

Like nearly every urban school district in the country, Columbus has significantly fewer students than it did just six years ago. At its peak in the 1970s, the district educated 110,000 students. By 2017, that figure had shrunk to 50,000. Today, the district has an enrollment of about 45,400.

Some of those students transferred to charter or private schools. An expansion of a state program has let more families use public dollars to pay for tuition. While 26,400 people applied for vouchers last school year, that to 91,100 in the current school year.

At the same time, the district’s schools were rated the worst in central Ohio. Columbus’s overall rating was a 2 on a scale of 1 to 5 stars, ranking it last among 49 districts in Franklin County.

It’s clear that Columbus City Schools is facing challenges that defy easy solutions. But the course of action officials have settled on — closing schools and redrawing attendance boundaries — has been tried twice before, and failed. 

Earlier this year — after voters approved a $100 million levy to fend off teacher layoffs and fund infrastructure improvements and renovations as federal COVID funds run out — the district hired a consultant for $500,000 to assess its buildings. It also created a 22-person task force to consider which schools to shutter.

But there’s no guarantee this solution will work. Closing schools is the least popular action a district can take, and this marks the third time since 2016 that Columbus has tried to overhaul its operations. Both previous efforts were stymied, and a list of 20 possible school closures has already generated criticism from residents and union members.

“I’ve been on a school closing committee,” says Douglas Harris, the Schlieder Foundation Chair in Public Education at Tulane University. “Sometimes it can be in the best interest of the district, but it’s the last thing anybody ever wants to do.”

No one knows the reality of the situation better than Jim Negron. In 2018, he led the committee that proposed closing schools and redrawing attendance zones — a plan that was rejected by the Board of Education. The president of CK Construction is co-chairing this year’s task force as well, and he remains optimistic these decisions will set the district up for success for the next 20 years.

“This is really important work. There’s something special happening in Columbus,” he says.

There is a reason for Negron’s optimism. Columbus is the fastest-growing city in the country, according to a new study by the Bank of America Institute, and more people are likely coming. Intel is planning a $20 billion manufacturing plant in New Albany, about 15 miles from downtown. Honda and LG Energy Solution are teaming up to create a plant about 45 minutes southwest of the city to manufacture batteries for electric vehicles. New zoning rules will allow about to be built in Columbus.

All this makes some, including teachers union president John Coneglio, question why the district isn’t looking to spruce up more of its schools instead of closing them. “We’re dismantling schools without a plan to grow the district,” he says.

He worries that unused buildings might be turned into parochial or charter schools, which would siphon off more students from the district. Already, parents are getting texts from charter schools with offers to help fill out their paperwork, he says. Will the city “leave neighborhoods empty and ripe for charters to take our kids?” he asks. 

Coneglio, who was originally on the task force but resigned, says the district’s efforts have a “predetermined outcome, and their goal is to guide you to that outcome.”

When the task force revealed at a May 7 meeting the 20 schools that might be closed, so many union officials and city residents attended that the district had to create an overflow room so everyone could watch the proceedings, according to a in The Columbus Dispatch.

“There’s a lot more work to be done here,” board President Christina Vera said at the meeting. “This is not going to be an easy lift.” 

Afterward, Superintendent Angela Chapman tried to head off criticism when she answered a question about upset parents by saying: “I would say … to take a deep breath. These are initial recommendations that have been submitted to begin the conversation about where we go from here. … These are not the final recommendations.”

The task force is slated to send a final list to the seven-member Board of Education in June. Any changes would take effect in fall 2025.

Even before the task force made its initial recommendations, co-chair Al Edmondson admitted that informal lobbying had begun. “People call and say, ‘Don’t close my school down. My mom went there, I went there.’ But these buildings are old. Something needs to happen.”

Harris says he has found that closing schools works best when a district considers the effect on the community and not just how much money can be saved. He urges leaders to “find ways to keep teams together,” because bonds among families, teachers and principals are hard to re-create. 

A conducted by Harris and two colleagues found that closing the lowest-performing elementary schools can improve student achievement, but not if children are placed in worse schools.

While Harris admits the disruption of changing schools can impair learning, this is offset by transferring to a better school, he says. And future cohorts of students, such as kindergartners, would attend the better school without disruption.

But this “is contingent on closing the lowest-performing schools … which doesn’t often happen,” he adds.

Columbus’s board policy calls for the task force to consider 14 factors in deciding which schools to close; the first on that list is teaching and curriculum. Other items include the age and condition of the building, the number of students who will need to be relocated and enrollment trends. Task force members are also to make sure closures don’t disproportionately affect one section of the city.

Before the meeting, Negron said he had already heard from a lot of residents, and he expects — and hopes — to hear from more before the final recommendation next month. “There’s a lot of passion around the task at hand. That’s not unexpected. I expect to hear more, and I welcome that.”

Correction: Students from Columbus City Schools have transferred to both charter and private schools.

Answer: When it $1.3 billion. 

This macabre joke is all-too real for San Francisco Unified, where this spring a state oversight panel took control of all budget decisions until the district balances its spending. After reviewing the district’s budget, the that the locally elected school board no longer has full authority over, “any action that is determined to be inconsistent with the ability of [the district] to meet its obligations for the current or subsequent fiscal year.” 

According to an independent fiscal , the district has a number of budgetary problems: 

• It paid for employee positions using one-time federal relief funds and will need to lay them off or find other revenues or savings;
• It has not adjusted student enrollment projections to account for continued declines;
• It does not track monthly attendance data and, as a result, overstates average daily attendance in projecting future revenues; and
• Its budget office is understaffed, leading to inadequate control over its  and problems tracking employee overtime costs. 

Some parts of this story make San Francisco unique. For example, it spent in a failed effort to fix its payroll processing system. And, to avert a strike last fall, the district agreed to large salary increases — over two years for teachers and for service workers. 

California is also unusual in that it has a powerful oversight agency. The Department of Education’s Fiscal Crisis Team reviews district budgets to ensure they are financially solvent, and it can take over budgeting decisions if the need arises. 

Through these reviews, San Francisco was first put on “qualified” notice in December, which shifted to “negative” in May. The auditor in charge of San Francisco’s review that the district now spends more money than it brings in, and with that will come added scrutiny over all its budgetary decisions until the district can demonstrate that its books are in order.

That’s a different and more active oversight role than exists in many states. 

Still, in many ways, San Francisco is a canary in the coal mine for much of the country. There are a few common factors to look out for: 

Does the district have underenrolled schools? 

San Francisco has 4,000 fewer students than it did a decade ago and it will lose another 4,600 by 2032. In those same projections, the district leadership noted that nearly all schools in all grades had unfilled seats.  

And yet, despite the enrollment declines, the district has not closed schools, and the city’s teachers union has for that moratorium to continue. But by delaying those hard decisions, the district has spread itself thin, because it’s harder to provide a full range of services at severely underenrolled schools. 

California schools have suffered bigger enrollment declines than other parts of the country — and those are projected to get worse in the coming years. Still, more than two-thirds of public school districts nationwide have fewer students than they did pre-pandemic. 

Are the district’s staffing ratios financially sustainable?

San Francisco actually looks better on this metric than many other parts of the country. While three-quarters of districts nationwide have lowered their student-to-teacher ratios over the last few years, San Francisco has not. 

The district has also kept its total staffing levels in check. Unlike many others, it did not hire a host of new administrators, paraprofessionals, school counselors or other support staff. 

However, that’s not for lack of trying. In December, one of the first steps the San Francisco school board took to reduce its long-term budget deficit was to . This month, the district agreed to impose an immediate freeze on new hiring. 

Media last fall decried San Francisco’s teacher shortages and the number of vacant positions the district had. But with a stroke of a pen those “vacant” positions went away once the district realized it could not afford to hire more people.

In fact, San Francisco’s actions are what make it such an important warning for other district leaders across the country. Many districts haven’t faced the same external pressures that San Francisco has, and yet, too many places are overstaffed and underenrolled. That combination could make for painful budget discussions in the coming years. 

It makes intuitive sense: Smaller districts with fewer kids need fewer schools. A district with 40,000 students operates many more school buildings than a district with 20,000, which in turn runs more than a district with 10,000. With widespread enrollment declines (for example, California’s school-age population is ), many districts are now grappling with whether to close one or more schools.

What’s the forcing factor for school closure decisions? Money, of course.

District revenues, for the most part, are tied to the number of students a district serves. Enrollment has fallen in many districts, but during the last three or four years, federal pandemic dollars more than made up for the reductions in funding associated with those declines. Many districts have had plenty of cash on hand to keep running a fleet of under-enrolled schools. But federal relief dollars will dry up this fall, and it’s increasingly unlikely that the state will fill the gaps. That’s prompting shrinking districts to grapple with whether they can still afford to operate all their schools.

Mostly what a district saves when closing a school is in staffing costs. Closing three schools can save the costs of three principals, three librarians, three nurses, and so on, and even some teaching positions where students can fill empty seats elsewhere in the district.

At Edunomics Lab, our rule of thumb is that when a district has under-enrolled schools, closing 1 of every 15 schools. There may also be nominal savings in facilities, but labor is far and away the largest portion (85-95%) of the budget, and savings there will be more consequential over the long term.

But not every closure brings layoffs. Where are the savings if the district isn’t issuing pink slips?

Typically, the savings come from downsizing the district’s overall staffing counts with attrition. Often, the district can move staff from the closing school to fill vacancies emerging in other schools as staff leave on their own (thus avoiding layoffs). When a principal retires in one school, the district may move a principal from the closing school over to fill that spot. The cost reduction comes from not rehiring to fill those vacancies. If the leaders choose instead to keep all schools open, then the district has little choice but to rehire to fill each departing principal, nurse, librarian and so on to keep the larger number of schools running.

Maintaining under-enrolled schools drains funds from all the district’s schools, not just the under-enrolled ones. Each district operates on a fixed revenue pool. Spending on principals, librarians and nurses in one or more half-empty schools means spending less on something else. It’s like having a fixed amount of frosting while trying to cover too many cupcakes. In the end, all the cupcakes end up with less frosting. For schools, that means they’ll start to see cutbacks to music, electives, AP courses, athletics and other supports as the district uses its limited funds to prop up the under-enrolled campuses.

Take the Los Angeles Unified School District, for example, where the district spends an average of about $23,000 per elementary student at each of its higher-poverty schools. As the graph below shows, a few of its tiniest schools are drawing down over $34,000 per student from LAUSD’s fixed pool of funds. The higher price tag means less cash available for all the other schools in the district. (This information is available for all districts .)

Of course, closure decisions shouldn’t focus on money alone. For instance, districts may consider whether there are other nearby schools for displaced students to attend. Also relevant is whether the school is effective in its core mission. In the graphic above, some of the higher-priced under-enrolled schools are below the average performance line for higher-poverty schools. Not only are these schools expensive, but it also matters if that money isn’t delivering value for students.

It’s also important to remember that not every small school has an outsize price tag. If a small school is able to operate cost-efficiently (meaning it has the same per-pupil costs as other similar schools), then closing it won’t likely save much at all. For a small school to be cost-efficient, it probably isn’t staffed in the same way as other schools. Maybe the principal also teaches a class, or the counselor is also the Spanish teacher. Or maybe the school uses some online options for electives or it operates as a multi-age Montessori model, or something else. And if it is demonstrating higher results for kids (meaning it is in that upper left quadrant on the graph), there’s even more of a case to leave it alone. What’s relevant here is that the small school isn’t draining funds from other schools, and is providing good value for the dollar.

School closure decisions are never easy for any community, regardless of what the numbers say. But it’s the leaders’ responsibility to be good stewards of funds and ensure all students are served well. Assessing which schools are most able to leverage their money to maximize student outcomes can help leaders bring transparency to that difficult process.

This analysis originally appeared at .

Public school enrollment rose steadily throughout the first two decades of the 2000s.

The National Center for Education Statistics was projecting public school enrollments to continue to grow, although its future projections were becoming less optimistic, thanks to falling immigration and birth rates. 

When COVID-19 hit, enrollments took an immediate dive, and the center lowered its forecast. It now projected a short-term bounceback followed by a longer-term decline.

The immediate, sharp rebound didn’t happen. The center is now projecting much lower enrollments for the rest of the decade. 

According to the center’s most recent data, public schools served 1.2 million fewer students in 2022-23 than they did in the last year before the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The losses were widespread, with 37 states and two-thirds of school districts suffering a decline. California was the biggest loser in numeric terms, with 420,000 fewer public school students (a 6.7% decline), while Oregon suffered the biggest decline in percentage terms (9.4%). 

What caused these trends? As Stanford University researcher Thomas Dee has , the COVID-era enrollment declines were due to a combination of factors — a rise in homeschooling, a shift to private schools, fewer school-age children and some students who simply went missing from the data. 

But that’s the past. A separate division of the center is in charge of making forward-looking projections, and it has more grim news: It that public schools, including public charter schools, will lose an additional 2.4 million students (4.9%) by 2031.

Those projections are a mix of historical enrollment patterns and demographic assumptions, and it’s possible they will be too pessimistic, especially given the uncertainty of the last few years. For example, homeschooling numbers surged in the early years of COVID but have started to in most places. Similarly, took a dramatic nosedive in 2020 but has rebounded since then. 

Birth rates, however, are a major driver of student enrollment trends, and they have been in a decline. Birth rates also bounced around during COVID, but in a piece for , Melissa Kearney and Phillip Levine found that the trajectory is once again downward. To put it in concrete terms, they point to data showing that there were almost 600,000 fewer births in 2019 than in 2007. That means 600,000 fewer kindergartners showing up to schoolhouse doors next fall.  

The enrollment changes are not spread evenly across the country. Thirteen states — including Florida, North Dakota and Idaho — are to gain students by the end of the decade. But that means the rest of the country should brace for fewer students. Seven states — Hawaii, California, New Mexico, New York, West Virginia, Mississippi and Oregon — are all projected to suffer double-digit declines in addition to any losses they’ve already seen. California alone is projected to lose nearly 1 million public school students by 2031.

In general, districts receive money based on how many students they serve, so shrinking communities should expect smaller school budgets going forward. It’s not a 1:1 relationship because most districts will still be able to count on local funds, which are typically not tied to student enrollment, as most state funds are. That protects about 45% of school district for the average district. Similarly, states have a variety of that offer at least temporary financial protection for districts with declining enrollment.  

Still, those districts will eventually have to get by with lower revenues. That’s a hard transition to make, especially as they shoulder growing pension costs plus fixed expenses like bond or facilities payments. 

The one-time federal relief funds gave a temporary lifeline to districts that were operating beyond their means, and it allowed schools across the country to reduce their student:teacher ratios. But when the money expires later this year, districts will have to consider options for downsizing their budgets, whether that means closing underenrolled schools, laying off staff to get back to their pre-pandemic levels or promising programs that are only just beginning to show results. 

In other words, districts with the steepest enrollment declines won’t be able to escape the mathematical pressures that will come with serving fewer students. Further enrollment declines are coming in most parts of the country, and districts must be prepared to navigate those headwinds. 

So what can leaders do now to batten down the hatches while this perfect storm is still on the horizon? Here are four concrete actions: 

Review layoff provisions 

Labor is by far the biggest line item in school district budgets. The one-time infusion of ESSER money allowed districts to artificially inflate their staffing levels, so schools may need to lay off a lot of workers in the coming years.

How many? Imagine if staffing counts fell back to the same levels they were in the last year before the pandemic, in 2018-19. If that scenario plays out, districts will need to lay off 384,000 full-time staff, or an equivalent number of part-time staff. Since schools tend to lay off part-timers first, this figure may be undercounting the total jobs at risk. 

To put these numbers in perspective, layoffs of this magnitude would be worse than the Great Recession that hit schools in 2009-10. At that time, public schools the equivalent of 110,000 full-time teaching jobs and 364,000 full- and part-time positions . 

There are a lot of uncertainties in these projections. Still, layoffs anywhere near this size would be for many schools and districts, especially in the low-income communities that received the largest infusions of ESSER money. Besides the affected workers, layoffs student achievement and tend to staff diversity efforts.

Now is the time to avoid, or at least minimize, these problems. According to a 2023 from the National Council on Teacher Quality, about one-third of districts largely or solely rely on last-in-first-out layoff policies and another third use them in combination with other factors. Those approaches are blind to a teacher’s classroom abilities and ignore factors like whether the educator works in hard-to-staff schools or subjects.

Instead, district leaders should review their policies now to shield the lowest-performing schools and hardest-to-staff roles from the biggest cuts. Could they set a policy protecting, say, the lowest-performing 25% of schools and any teaching position that had less than three applicants? These may not be the right cut-offs for every district, but simple numerical rules like this would help minimize the worst impacts of layoffs. 

Close underenrolled schools and help students and staff transition  

����Ӱ��’s Linda Jacobson worked with researchers from the Brookings Institution and found 4,428 schools across the country that had suffered student enrollment declines of 20% or more. Thanks to declining birth rates, more schools are projected to be on this list in the coming years. 

Like layoffs, closures of underenrolled schools can be harmful to students and staff. But districts that delay painful decisions eventually have to make bigger, even more disruptive changes. Students would be better off if districts were honest about their budget problems and took steps, like matching displaced young people with dedicated counselors or giving them priority access to the best schools, in order to make those transitions easier. If districts wait to close underenrolled schools until they’re under true financial duress, it will be harder to put any of those types of transitional supports in place. 

Compete for all the kids in your area 

It turned some heads last fall when came out that New York City was proposing to spend $21 million on an ad campaign to boost enrollment. It’s not crazy for a district to advertise its offerings, but it needs to be realistic about costs and benefits. For example, one crude way to look at it is to calculate the break-even costs. With New York City $30,000 per pupil, it would take about 700 newly enrolled students to cover its advertising budget. 

This isn’t just about competing with public charter schools, private schools or homeschooling. In many states with , districts have a financial interest in persuading as many local families as possible to enroll their children in their schools.

Evaluate everything

It’s probably too late for districts to use their ESSER funds to put all the necessary processes and data collections in place for formal, rigorous program evaluations, but it would still be smart to use any remaining money to invest in data analyses. If the district expanded or created a summer or tutoring program, did the participating students make gains? How did students, parents or staff experience the program? Even simple data comparisons would be helpful for pointing out what went well and what didn’t and making the case for continued investment. 

As NWEA’s Lindsay Dworkin noted recently, “It has always been important to understand which programs or interventions are working, for which students and at what cost.” Those types of questions are now more important than ever. 

When Congress created the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief program, everyone knew the one-time money would eventually run out. Districts only have a few months left to start preparing for the financial storm that’s coming. 

The Council of Chief State School Officers representatives of a dozen major education organizations, state departments and local districts to share stories about their most successful efforts and how they plan to maintain the programs that yielded the best outcomes as budgets tighten. ����Ӱ��’s Beth Hawkins moderated one of the sessions, which showcased one district’s decision to collect data on what was working.

Organizers have released videos of the panels, focusing on innovative efforts at the state, district and school levels. In one, North Carolina officials to create an office of learning recovery within the state Department of Public Instruction, which will conduct research to help legislators make data-informed decisions about K-12 policy. The state also built a “funding cliff dashboard” for school systems to use as they confront the end of the federal aid.

Attendees also heard from a who slashed student office referrals to one third of pre-pandemic rates by gathering detailed, personal information on young people’s well-being and changing expectations for how staff spend their time. Teachers and administrators now join students for an extended lunch period, for example, and school leaders frequently ask students about everything from stress to thoughts of suicide, instead of relying on teacher referrals to support staff.

On Hawkins’s panel,  Adam Kunz, assistant superintendent of St. Paul Public Schools, and Indianapolis Public Schools Deputy Superintendent Andrew Strope delved into how their districts with “right-sizing” efforts despite an infusion of cash that they could have used to forestall painful decisions. Instead, both school systems spent their federal funds on the recovery efforts that showed the strongest returns on investment.

In addition to fixing longstanding inequities in how special education and gifted and talented services are provided, Indianapolis invested in a high-dosage tutoring effort credited with reducing lost ground in math and reading to a third of losses in similar districts. 

St. Paul’s presentation described the district’s decision to plan for the end of federal funding even before the money arrived and showcased a novel high school credit recovery effort that has yielded major gains in student engagement and graduation readiness.

Here are videos of the other sessions on the program:

North Carolina Superintendent of Public Instruction Catherine Truitt and state Sen. Michael Lee talk with CCSSO CEO Carissa Moffat Miller about their state’s creation of a research hub to collect data on effective recovery efforts that lawmakers can tap when deciding education policy priorities. 

Georgia Association of Secondary School Principals’ 2023 Middle School Principal of the Year Suzan Harris and eighth-grader Carter Glover describe dramatic improvements in their Jackson school’s disciplinary climate and ability to support student mental health.

CCSSO’s 2023 National Teacher of the Year Rebecka Peterson talks to educator Jo-Anne Smith of Waterbury, Vermont, about her role as a kindergarten intervention specialist at Brookside Primary School.

Roberto Rodriguez, assistant secretary for planning, evaluation and policy development with the U.S. Department of Education, talks with Council of the Great City Schools Executive Director Ray Hart about opportunities to continue the most effective ESSER investments. 

As we set out to make plans for the 2023 academic year, my team knew that we needed to somehow simultaneously ‘right-size’ the district while also enabling investment in new initiatives to enhance academic outcomes and the student experience. 

I often read and hear about the fiscal cliff. It’s a serious matter we can’t ignore. But there is seemingly a void of ideas, solutions or tools to equip us as district leaders to better confront and work around these looming financial challenges. Thankfully, we landed on an innovative and replicable strategy that allowed us to find budget efficiencies without sacrificing the student experience, without requiring any program elimination, and without laying off any staffers. We did this through an unconventional route: smarter school scheduling. 

Thanks to a partnership with Timely, a new organization dedicated to helping schools build better master schedules, we utilized middle and high school scheduling as a vehicle to balance our academic, staffing and budget priorities for the new school year. 

In total, across 14 middle and high schools, we identified significant savings by scheduling class sizes and teacher loads more consistently across schools. For the second consecutive year, our district maintained an overall average class size target of 24, a figure still below the Texas state average. But initial analysis revealed significant variation of class sizes and teacher loads across schools, and often within individual schools, driven by inefficient staffing and scheduling.

Through careful and intentional resource allocation enabled by Timely, we addressed a long-term challenge of mismatched resources and student needs – some schools and classrooms were unintentionally over-resourced while others were under-resourced. In total, our district identified 37 positions we eliminated through vacancies created by attrition, representing a savings of $2.2 million, which we then reinvested into new priority areas, hiring additional core subject teachers and staff for special populations. And, critically, we avoided teacher layoffs and took the first step of a multi-year plan to more efficiently allocate resources to schools given budget pressures while strengthening transparency and partnership between schools and the central office.

Why Scheduling Matters 

The master schedule is the beating heart of a school. It is an incredible fulcrum of the student experience, teacher experience, and innovative staffing and budget solutions. And yet in districts across the country, school leaders routinely struggle with the development of their schedules. And their counterparts within central offices are often not equipped to support them and lack visibility into the staffing and scheduling decisions made at individual school sites. 

When done poorly, we miss opportunities to build a schedule that addresses students’ needs while efficiently maximizing resources. For example, a common practice of schools is to roll over the prior year’s schedule with the teachers who are returning the following year. This may seem like the safest approach given the complexities of a secondary schedule, but there are often inefficiencies in schedules, and over time they can be calcified and assumed to be the norm. Instead, we built a bottom-up schedule based on what our students were requesting and needed, which changed the paradigm. 

The reality is student course offerings don’t always align to the needs and requests of students, there is an overall mismatch of resources across schools, certain classes are under-enrolled while others are over-subscribed, and students from historically marginalized backgrounds can be disproportionately impacted. As a result, schools may find themselves unintentionally allocating resources in a manner that goes against their own goals and objectives, with the lowest class sizes in advanced classes, electives and/or upper grades. 

Scheduling has regularly been one of the hardest things we’ve had to do each year in Lubbock. But our recent work has taught us that it need not be a process we simply suffer through and endure. 

To the contrary, it’s a process that can now help us prioritize and enable broader academic, staffing, and budget goals. And most importantly, strategic scheduling can help ensure that all students get access to the courses they want and need to be on track to graduate, remain inspired to attend and excel in school, and be empowered to pursue a postsecondary pathway. 

Schedules = Values 

The school schedule reflects values and priorities. With upwards of 85% of a district budget dedicated to personnel, there are few questions more paramount than how your staff and students spend their time every day, what positions you’ll hire for, how many teachers you will hire, and how students will be able to interact with them. Equitable resource allocation across schools, proper access to core courses and electives, and dedicated support to sub-groups begins with the development of a school schedule. And perhaps the most overlooked aspect of scheduling is the ability to develop innovative staffing and budgeting solutions. 

When scheduling is approached strategically, which requires the right tools and support, there is an immense opportunity to address critical priorities with district staffing, budgets, and academic goals. Lubbock demonstrated this is possible. Without this approach, we would have faced the possibility of teacher layoffs and program eliminations. What’s more, our district has built on this progress by enhancing our timelines, systems, processes, and tools so that the annual scheduling process will be an ongoing opportunity to ensure efficient and strategic use of resources.

Now, district leaders statewide are scrambling to explain to their communities that, in fact, they are facing massive cuts. In many places, balancing the budget will mean layoffs or school closures. 

Like their counterparts throughout the country, Minnesota school systems are facing the one-two punch of the end of COVID recovery aid and enrollment losses — in many places, going back years — that means less per-pupil state money. School funding experts call this a fiscal cliff.

“That is No. 1 with a bullet on any superintendent’s whiteboard,” says Kirk Schneidawind, executive director of the Minnesota School Boards Association. 

The state’s second-largest district, St. Paul Public Schools projects a $150 million deficit for the 2024-25 academic year. Minneapolis Public Schools anticipates a $116 million shortfall. Even the most prosperous Twin Cities suburbs are stuck explaining the disconnect to families who moved there for their well-funded schools.

The confusion among members of the public who think the schools are awash in cash has real consequences, says Schneidawind. Last year, half of school system funding referenda failed at the ballot box, depriving districts of millions more.

Billions in new state funding and a fiscal cliff: How can both be true? Here are four critical — and much misunderstood — aspects of the looming crisis.

More Money, More Strings

With Democrats in control of the Capitol for the first time in more than a decade and a $17 billion surplus in state coffers, most policymakers assumed the question wouldn’t be whether education would see a spending boost in 2023, but how big it would be and how the pie would be divided. 

“My messages to families, to students, to teachers, to support staff is, ‘This is the budget for many of us who taught for decades, this is the budget we’re waiting for,’ ” Gov. Tim Walz, a former teacher, said at the start of the session, newspaper. “This is the transformational moment.” 

As he signed the education finance bill into law in June, Walz called it “The Minnesota Miracle 2.0” — a reference to a sweeping school finance reform measure of the 1970s that earned then-Gov. Wendall Anderson a photo on the cover of Time magazine. 

Yet even before the ink on Walz’s signature was dry, school leaders were bemoaning the fine print. In the end, the change to the basic revenue formula increased per-pupil funding from $6,863 in 2023 to $7,281 in 2025. 

Eight months, later, they’re still doing the math, but the Minnesota School Boards Association, the Association of Metropolitan School Districts and others estimate that up to half the $2.2 billion had already been earmarked for as many as 65 new mandates, ranging from free meals for all students to menstrual products in school restrooms.

Lawmakers also extended unemployment insurance to cover bus drivers, some substitute teachers, cafeteria workers, classroom aides and other seasonal workers. This made Minnesota the first state to mandate this benefit for hourly employees, but it was unclear who will pay the premiums in the long term.

After a grueling fight, the legislature allotted $135 million to pay for the first year of unemployment insurance premiums, promising to revisit funding in the future. District leaders were only partly appeased, noting that even if the state subsidized the premiums going forward, the employees who typically staff summer programs could choose not to.

Nearly $75 million is allotted to help fund a new law requiring science-backed literacy curriculum and instruction. There is $45 million for new school librarians, $15 million to support “full-service” schools — which provide health and social services to families — and money for new ethnic studies materials, Naloxone and efforts to retain teachers of color. 

Funding for K-12 education, which makes up nearly a third of the state budget, is $23.2 billion for fiscal years 2024 and 2025.

Welcome though the money and new benefits are, says Schneidawind, districts will still have to scramble to cover some costs. Part of the difficulty of calculating just how much that will be is that school systems keep discovering new ways that the costs are showing up. The private companies that supply substitute teachers, for instance, are passing along their new state benefit costs.

Most likely, the cavalry is not coming. Like many state legislatures, Minnesota’s meets on a two-year calendar. Last year was the current cycle’s budgeting year; when the 2024 session begins Feb. 12, lawmakers will focus on capital and infrastructure bonding bills. 

How ‘New Money’ Becomes a Cut

Every year, after the legislative session gavels to a close, lawmakers of both parties go back home to boast that they boosted K-12 spending by adding to the state’s general fund. They rarely mention that school funding has, by many calculations, not kept up with inflation. 

One way this has traditionally been accomplished is by cutting or not increasing funding for services paid for out of other parts of the budget, such as special education and English learner instruction. School districts must then divert the “new” money to make up the shortfalls, in what’s referred to as a cross-subsidy. For the current fiscal year, Minnesota schools are spending $750 million just to fill the special education funding gap — by far the largest.

Districts have long pushed to end the practice, which many say may aid officials’ re-election efforts but has cloaked a steady erosion of state funding. With a budget surplus estimated at $17.5 billion, lawmakers last year said it was time to fully fund the cross-subsidies. 

Gov. Tim Walz, however, only wanted to , preferring to spend more on required paid family leave and other new programs. In the end, though, that didn’t happen. The funding set aside to offset special education losses was reduced to cover just 44% of the gap — freeing up almost the exact sum needed to cover seasonal workers’ unemployment benefits for one year.

The upshot: Historic infusion notwithstanding, Democratic lawmakers say there is still an $800-per-pupil gap between funding levels 20 years ago and today, adjusted for inflation. That does not reflect recent cost increases in transportation, labor and other areas, says Scott Croonquist, executive director of Minnesota’s Association of Metropolitan School Districts. 

The Democratic head of the House Education Finance Committee, Rep. Cheryl Youakim defended the outcomes, saying the 2023 increases closed the inflationary gap by one-third. “There has been 20 years of underfunding in education and that can’t be turned around overnight,” she says. “Our districts still do have needs.”

Bad News at the Ballot Box

In November, the Rochester, Minnesota, public school system lost a technology funding referendum . As tiny as the margin was, the impact was tectonic. 

The levy would have generated $10 million a year for a decade, freeing up $7 million a year the cash-strapped district currently spends on technology to reduce class sizes and stave off the impact of falling enrollment. In short order, Superintendent Kent Pekel announced that the district had no choice but to close three schools and cut transportation costs by changing attendance boundaries. 

Three weeks later, the with a $10 million donation intended to stave off the pain — but only for a year. District leaders will use that time to prep for a do-over, hoping 2024’s presidential election draws more voters than the referendum did and that a majority will agree to the tax.

When Pekel took over as superintendent in July 2021, he realized that years of eroded state funding was only one factor wreaking havoc on his budget. The district had been adding staff but losing students for a decade, albeit at a slower rate than many school systems. Instead of using federal COVID aid to close the gap, which would have postponed the fiscal reckoning, he cut $7 million in 2022 and $14 million last year.

In addition to the technology levy that failed at the ballot box last fall, the district depends on revenue from a larger operating levy. If it can’t get that approved, Rochester leaders will have to find another $10 million to cut in 2024 and $17 million in 2025. 

According to the school boards association, voters rejected half of operating levies on the ballot throughout the state last year. Perhaps anticipating this, lawmakers last year allowed districts to renew levies once without going to the voters. Schneidawind anticipates 50 school systems will take advantage of the new law this fall.

The Other Postponed Reckoning

Pekel is one of a few Minnesota superintendents who decided not to use pandemic relief funds to close pre-existing budget gaps. Many districts spent large swaths of their COVID recovery aid staving off tough issues posed by declining enrollment. Faced with a competitive labor market, many boosted educator pay. For example, despite years of shrinking enrollment, Minneapolis Public Schools added 400 jobs.

In addition to explaining to families and staff about the imminent loss of federal funding, many districts must now grapple with how to communicate why the boost in state aid won’t head off cuts.

Next door to Minneapolis, the Robbinsdale Area School District is predicting it could end the current fiscal year $2.1 million in the red and may need to cut $17 million to balance the books next year. This can’t be accomplished without layoffs. 

In January, school board member Kim Holmes acknowledged that decisions by the board and district leadership will make balancing the budget especially painful.
“We misstepped,” the suburban news site CCX Media . “This board misstepped, the administration misstepped. If we weren’t tracking historical decreased enrollment — and one of the biggest things they told us not to do with [COVID] dollars was hire positions — and we did it. So we have to come out and take some ownership.”

Programs that add hours and support to the school day, are especially critical for low-income students who were set back the most during the pandemic, according to the report, “The Expanded Classroom.” Those students’ families can’t pay for tutoring, museum visits, and arts activities that more affluent families can.

“The classroom has been the primary venue for helping students learn, build relationships, and develop skills for the workforce,” according to the report. “But in the current era, such activities must transcend the classroom to help kids fully recover from learning loss, close longstanding achievement gaps, and prepare students for 21st-century careers.”

Only one quarter of Indiana students are able to attend these programs, the report found, but many more should be added, not reduced, as will happen if money runs out in the next two years. 

“Effort must be sustained over years—not months—to make up for the lost time of the pandemic and to begin to chip away at a decades-old gap in educational outcomes between high- and low-income students,” states the report, a joint project of the United Way of Central Indiana, the Boys and Girls Clubs serving South Bend and Indianapolis, and nonprofit education advocacy groups The Mind Trust and Indiana Afterschool Network.

Since the start of the pandemic, the state has devoted $35 million of federal COVID relief money to out-of-school learning, plus another $185 million in state money. The federal money runs out next fall and the state money runs out in the summer of 2025.

Mind Trust officials said they hope the report rallies support for out-of-school learning with legislators ahead of the 2025-2027 state budget debate. The report doesn’t ask for a specific amount of money or for money for any particular program, just for understanding the importance of learning outside of the school day.

“It’s really to make sure that our state leaders, legislators and others are thinking about the out-of-school time programs in Indiana as an important part of the ecosystem, and not as something that is just a time-limited program that’s about COVID recovery, and nothing else,” said Mind Trust chief strategy officer Kristin Grimme.

State Rep. Bob Behning, chairman of the House Education Committee, said there’s support for programs outside of the school day in the Legislature. But he cautioned there will be competition for money in the next budget.

“I would predict it’s going to be tight, tighter than we’ve had the last couple of budget cycles,” Behning said. “So you’re going to have to really define not just the need, but that there are gains. Once you can define the academic gains. I think that there would be more interest.”

Grimme agreed and said programs need to be evaluated and money should go to those that were the most successful. Some programs have evaluations pending while others have emerging data on their academic impact that should be reviewed next year.

Adding academic gains is extra important because Indiana’s recovery from the pandemic has “stalled,” the report contends. Though state test scores have improved since 2021, reading proficiency rates fell slightly between 2022 and 2023 while other gains were small.

 Indiana also saw college enrollment drop from 65 percent of graduating high school seniors before the pandemic to 53 percent in 2020–21.

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The report highlights the Indy Summer Learning Labs the Mind Trust and United Way have organized in Indianapolis using state money the last three years. That five-week program serving more than 5,000 students in 43 different sites around the city shows double-digit gains in proficiency rates in the tests students take at the start of the program and at the end.

Last summer, the labs saw 23 percentage point increases in students scoring at grade level or above in English and 22 percentage points in math.

The state will soon take applications from organizations around the state to expand that summer program to other cities, though money set aside for them ends in 2025.

Indiana Learns, another program that gives $1,000 grants to low-income parents to spend on tutoring or afterschool programs for their children, is being evaluated now to see if it needs changes. With more than 10,000 students using more than 100 different tutoring providers, Grimme said, it’s hard to know if Indiana Learns is reaching the right students and if they are getting what they need.

“I do think it’s something that we launched quickly to try to support students and families across the state,” Grimme said. “Is it the version of the program that the state should sustain in the future?”

Carvalho, who nearly two years ago assumed leadership of the nation’s second largest school district, said LAUSD is in relatively good financial standing and that enrollment declines are slowing.

But, he said, California’s most populous city “is not out of the woods yet” when it comes to tight budgets and closing schools.

The headwinds facing Los Angeles public schools are by no means unique to that city. Districts around the country are facing the expiration next year of more than $190 billion in federal funds meant to help schools remain open during the pandemic and aid in the recovery of students.

Carvalho, who previously served as Miami’s superintendent, said LA Unified has avoided the fiscal “Armageddon” he warned of more than a year ago. 

He said a reorganization of the district conducted over the past two years, to streamline school support services has netted LAUSD “dozens of millions” in savings, putting the system in good financial shape. 

But the district is still developing a plan for roughly 1,800 teachers, counselors and other staffers hired during the pandemic whose salaries have been paid for using the one-time federal aid. Carvalho said “strategically essential positions” will be kept. “We need to ask the question,” he said. “Is the need still there and is this the right position? 

To make up for the end of federal aid, he said, LAUSD has imposed a targeted hiring freeze, deciding on a case-by-case basis which of the employees who leave their jobs to replace. 

It will use the funds from jobs that are not filled to pay for those federally funded jobs it decides to keep. 

“We’re going to bank on [attrition] as a key solution” to make up for the loss of federal aid, he said.

A more complicated challenge now facing Los Angeles schools is a historic enrollment decline which has been ongoing for decades but was exacerbated by the pandemic.

While many school districts have experienced large enrollment declines since the pandemic began, several factors make the declines in Los Angeles more dramatic.  

First, Carvalho said, rising housing costs have forced many families to leave Los Angeles. The average price of a single-family home there is now nearly $1 million, according to Zillow, up by more than a third from five years ago. Local with rising costs.  

“The high cost of living has, over the years, pushed a lot of families out,” said Carvalho. “It’s not a function of individuals leaving the school system going to private schools or going to charter schools.”

Enrollment in LA schools for pre-K through twelfth grade from 566,604 in the 2012-2013 school year to 422,276 in the 2022-2023 academic year.

But Carvalho said the exodus may be slowing. show the number of students enrolled this year was down about two percent from the previous year.

The city’s has helped bolster enrollment, Carvalho said. LAUSD stats show 6,471 students are now enrolled in the district’s pre-K programs, up from 5,687 in 2021.  

Whether this is enough students to keep each of the city’s schools in operation, the superintendent said, remains an open question. 

The district is not “making decisions specific to consolidation or closure of schools based on a dire financial position,” said Carvalho.

But, at some point, shrinking schools may become too small to function, he said.   

“It has nothing to do with the finances,” Carvalho said. “It’s actually something to do with the type of offerings we provide our students. At a certain point a very small, secondary schools cannot offer the elective programs that kids need.”

“It certainly is a tool in the toolbox,” Carvalho said of closing or consolidating schools. “But it’s one that is used as a measure of last resort, and we are nowhere near that point.”    

Still the district is looking at high schools with less than 300 students as possible candidates for closure or consolidation, he said.  

High schools that enroll fewer than 300 students struggle to muster a variety of classes and extracurricular activities to adequately serve their communities, said Carvalho, adding that LAUSD has few schools of that size, and is still developing a plan for them.   

Decisions to close or consolidate schools are almost always unpopular. But for Los Angeles, it’s not a question of if, but when, said Pedro Noguera, dean of USC’s Rossier School of Education.

“People have these traditional attachments, but schools that serve 1,000 kids do much better than two schools serving 500 kids a piece,” Noguera said. “The challenge will be, not just to shrink, but to shrink and get better simultaneously, so people don’t feel like they’re losing.”

Noguera said he’s encouraged by steps he’s seen Carvalho take, but declining enrollments and the need to make academic progress systemwide are still the big issues facing the district.   

On the academic front, Carvalho said gains in math scores on state and show the district is making progress. He also pointed to rising attendance rates as a sign LAUSD is on the upswing. The system’s average daily attendance has risen from 83% to 93% during his tenure, Carvalho said. 

The superintendent also provided a few additional updates on the district in his exclusive interview with the 74:

• Carvalho said he has created a draft version of a controversial, new policy to limit the colocation of charter schools in certain buildings, and that next month he will present the policy as a recommendation to the district’s board. 

• He said LAUSD is working on a plan to reinforce its efforts to promote literacy after showed a third straight year of declining rates of reading proficiency. 

• Carvalho, who previously turned down an offer to lead New York City’s school system, said he intends to stay on as LA’s education boss for the foreseeable future. “There will be no additional superintendency for me… beyond Los Angeles,” he said.“There’s something to be said about stable, sustainable leadership.”

The Portuguese immigrant, who worked his way up from washing dishes and stints of homelessness to become one of the nation’s most celebrated educators, has already done much to earn the gratitude of his adopted home on the west coast, said Ana Ponce, executive director of GPSN, a local advocacy group.

“He’s earned the respect of educators and families,” said Ponce. “We’re all rooting for his success.”

David Steiner

America’s Education System Is a Mess, and Students Are Paying the Price

COVID-19, the legacy of race-based redlining, the lack of support for health care, child care and parental leave, and other social and economic policies have taken a terrible toll on student learning. But the fundamental cause of poor outcomes, writes contributor David Steiner of the , is that policy leaders have eroded the instructional core and designed our education system for failure. As we have sown, so shall we reap. The challenges and rewards of learning are being washed away, and students are desperately the worse for the mess we have made. Read More

Margaret Raymond

The Terrible Truth — Current Solutions to COVID Learning Loss Are Doomed to Fail

Despite well-intended and rapid responses to COVID learning loss, solutions such as tutoring or summer school are doomed to fail, says contributor Margaret (Macke) Raymond of the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University. How do we know? CREDO researchers looked at learning patterns for students at three levels of achievement in 16 states and found that even with five extra years of education, only about 75% will be at grade level by high school graduation. No school can offer that much. It is time to decide whether to make necessary changes or continue to support a system that will almost certainly fail. Read More

Mark Schneider

The Future is STEM — But Without Enough Students, the U.S. Will Be Left Behind

America no longer produces the most science and engineering research publications, patents or natural-science Ph.D.s, and these trends are unlikely to change anytime soon. The problem isn’t a lack of universities to train future scientists or an economy incapable of encouraging innovation. Rather, says contributor Mark Schneider of the Institute of Education Sciences, it originates much earlier in the supply chain, in elementary school. Congress has a chance to help turn this around, by passing the New Essential Education Discoveries (NEED) Act. Read More

John Bailey

The Promise of Personalized Learning Never Delivered. Today’s AI Is Different

Educators often encounter lofty promises of technology revolutionizing learning, only to find reality fails to meet expectations. But based on his experiences with the new generation of artificial intelligence tools, contributor John Bailey believes society may be in the early stages of a transformative moment. This may very well usher in an era of individualized learning, empowering all students to realize their full potential and fostering a more equitable and effective educational experience. Read his four reasons why this generation of AI tools is likely to succeed where other technologies have failed. Read More

Chad Aldeman

Interactive — With More Teachers & Fewer Students, Districts Are Set up for Financial Trouble

To understand the teacher labor market, you have to hold two competing narratives in your head. On one hand, teacher turnover hit new highs, morale is low and schools are facing shortages. At the same time, public schools employ more teachers than before COVID, while serving 1.9 million fewer students. Student-teacher ratios are near all-time lows. Contributor Chad Aldeman and Eamonn Fitzmaurice, ����Ӱ��’s art and technology director, plotted these changes on an exclusive, interactive map — and explain how they’re putting districts in financial peril. View the Map

Fascinating, right? But these are only the tip of the iceberg. Here’s a roundup of some of the hottest topics our op-ed contributors tackled, and what they had to say:

Future of High School

Credit Hours Are a Relic of the Past. How States Must Disrupt High School — Now

Russlynn Ali & Timothy Knowles

Back to School — 6 Tips from Students on How to Make High School Relevant

Beth Fertig

I Changed My Shoes, and It Revolutionized How I Was Able to Rethink High School

William Blake

Fiscal Cliff & School Funding

The 50 Very Different States of American Public Education

Chad Aldeman

It’s Time to Start Preparing Now for School Closures that Are Coming

Timothy Daly

Educators, Beware: As Budget Cuts Loom, Now Is NOT the Time to Quit Your Job

Katherine Silberstein & Marguerite Roza

Schools Could Lose 136,000 Teaching Jobs When Federal COVID Funds Run Out

Chad Aldeman

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence Will Not Transform K-12 Education Without Changes to ‘the Grammar of School’

Joel Rose

Schools Must Embrace the Looming Disruption of ChatGPT

Sarah Dillard

Personalized Education Is Not a Panacea. Neither Is Artificial Intelligence

Natalia Kucirkova

Tutoring

Done Right, Tutoring Can Greatly Boost Student Learning. How Do We Get There?

Kevin Huffman

As Virginia Rolls Out Ambitious Statewide High-Dosage Tutoring Effort This Week, 3 Keys to Success

Maureen Kelleher

Why This Tutoring ‘Moment’ Could Die If We Don’t Tighten Up the Models

Mike Goldstein

Learning Loss

New NAEP Scores Reveal the Failure of Pandemic Academic Recovery Efforts

Vladimir Kogan

Quarantines, Not School Closures, Led to Devastating Losses in Math and Reading

John Bailey

6 Teachers Tell Their Secrets for Getting Middle Schoolers up to Speed in Math

Alexandra Frost

Special Ed and Gifted & Talented

Bracing for a Tidal Wave of Unnecessary Special Education Referrals

Lauren Morando Rhim, Candace Cortiella, Lindsay Kubatzky & Laurie VanderPloeg

Why Are Schools Comfortable Accepting Failure for Students with Disabilities?

David Flink & Lauren Morando Rhim

NYC’s New Gifted & Talented Admissions Brings Chaos — and Disregards Research

Alina Adams

Of the $3.6 billion the state received in the third and final round of federal relief, about $2.3 billion had been spent or earmarked as of Oct. 31, including $1.2 billion on staffing. 

Stressing the Short Term

Notably, given warnings of looming post-ESSER teacher layoffs, the largest share of North Carolina’s staffing investments — and the single largest last-round expenditure of any sort — went to one-time expenditures.

About 55% of North Carolina’s local education agencies spent some of their third-round ESSER dollars on staff bonuses. That translated to $445 million, or 20% of the final federal installment spent so far. Most of these expenditures occurred in fiscal year 2022, likely reflecting pandemic-related challenges in recruiting and retaining staff.  

North Carolina’s state-level data do not show whether bonuses were distributed across the board to thank teachers for their efforts during COVID or targeted to hiring and retention in hard-to-fill areas. But an earlier of the nation’s 100 largest school districts’ third-round ESSER plans found that nearly half the districts considering bonuses intended to target them toward specific hard-to-fill positions, hard-to-staff schools or effective teachers. FutureEd’s of ESSER spending in selected North Carolina school districts revealed that several are using bonuses strategically to hire and keep staff in hard-to-fill jobs. has found targeted bonuses to be more effective than across-the-board stipends in attracting and retaining teachers.

Statewide, staff bonuses were most likely in rural areas. “A lot of the more rural districts already face competition [for teachers], especially if they’re bordering a county or a district that is urban and can offer a larger [salary] supplement,” said Rachel Wright-Junio, director of North Carolina’s office of learning recovery and acceleration. “So, I would understand why they would take advantage of awarding bonuses to try to attract and retain teachers.”

Though our analysis suggests that bonuses may have been a wise use of one-time funds, especially when targeted to fill hard-to-staff positions, with North Carolina district leaders suggest that they have also forced some districts to compete for teachers, as some were able to offer higher bonuses than others. Wright-Junio expressed concern that rural districts may see worse teacher and bus driver shortages when the bonus funds run out.

Spending May Not Equal New Hires

North Carolina districts and charter schools have spent nearly $369.3 million of their final round of ESSER funding on staff salaries, with about one-third of the money going to classroom teachers. An additional $50.2 million went for recurring extra payments to attract and retain highly effective educators. These salary supplements are typically set at the local level and paid for with local funds. Though bonuses represent North Carolina’s largest ESSER expenditure, teacher salaries emerged among the top spending priorities in two-thirds of local education agencies.

We found that the number of North Carolina teachers supported by federal funds rose by 23% between 2018-19 and 2022-23 — an increase of 1,300. But the total number of teachers statewide has declined slightly, by 720, from pre-pandemic levels. This suggests that at least some ESSER money has funded existing educators, not new personnel. 

While some districts might be paying existing staff with ESSER dollars to free up other funds, our analysis indicates the statewide student-teacher ratio has declined, from 15.1 in 2018-19 to 14.7 in 2022-23. Pandemic funds may have made it possible for school districts to keep teachers they might otherwise have had to let go due to student enrollment declines.

This doesn’t necessarily mean all these positions will automatically disappear when the ESSER money runs out. “You don’t know the counterfactual, which might be that the district would have hired for that new position anyway and used other spending for it,” said Dan Goldhaber, director of the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research at the American Institutes for Research and a FutureEd research adviser. “I think it probably indicates that some of those teachers are, in fact, going to go when ESSER disappears. But you don’t know that for sure.”

Looking Forward

The North Carolina Department of Education has developed several tools to help local education agencies assess which of their investments are most important to sustain. For example, it created a framework for sustainability, called an investment grid, to help districts use performance data to gauge the value of their investments. State education officials are also helping school districts and charters find additional funding for summer learning, tutoring and other priorities. They developed a strategy for districts to align their ESSER investments with existing federal funding programs so they can potentially transition to other federal funding.

Ultimately, North Carolina’s local education agencies are going to face staffing choices as the deadline for spending the state’s remaining $1.2 billion in federal COVID school aid approaches. Their education leaders have spent the largest share of their last round of ESSER monies on bonuses and other short-term investments may make the task a little easier.

But for certain public schools, funding challenges are nothing new. For the last two decades, our research team at the University of Arkansas has been studying charter school funding in major  cities across the country. Over the summer, we released that found that across 18 cities in 16 states, charter schools receive, on average, 29.5% less funding — $7,147 less per student — than neighboring traditional public schools. This inequity is nothing new.

Our first report, which studied the 2002-03 school year, found a 27% funding gap. Since then, the gap has never been smaller than 20.7%, and it has on a number of occasions been higher than 30%. In other words, students who decide to attend a charter school in one of those cities will, on average, typically sacrifice nearly a third of their funding.

Of course, it’s not just about spending — ultimately, the goal is better outcomes for students. And so, for our , our team combined funding research with data on student achievement so we could see what taxpayers are getting for their money.

The findings were clear: Public charter schools are a great investment. Across nine major cities — Camden, New Jersey; Denver; Houston; Indianapolis; Memphis; New Orleans; New York City; San Antonio, Texas; and Washington, D.C.. — we found that, despite persistent funding gaps, charter schools produced more learning and higher predicted lifetime earnings than traditional public schools per education dollar spent.  

As education leaders make tough financial choices in the coming months, properly funding charter schools should be a no-brainer. After all, if they can achieve these results even with a yawning funding gap, imagine what they could do if they were funded equitably. 

To obtain our findings, we matched our funding research with performance data from the and research findings from the at Stanford University. Notably, this methodology accounts for observable differences between the student populations of charter schools and traditional public schools, including prior academic achievement — and so it is truly an apples-to-apples comparison. 

The results were striking.

In reading, charters average 4.4 NAEP points higher per $1,000 spent than traditional public schools, making charter schools 41% more cost-effective in reading.

 In math, charters average 4.7 points higher per $1,000 funded, making them 43% more cost-effective in math. 

We also examined how attending a charter school instead of a traditional public school would affect lifetime earnings for students. To estimate this, we used wage data from the alongside the aforementioned CREDO study. And once again, charters came out on top. On average, each dollar invested in a student’s schooling in traditional public schools yields $3.94 in lifetime earnings. That same dollar invested in a charter school student yields $6.25 in lifetime earnings — a 58% higher return on investment over the course of a 13-year education. 

What does this mean for education leaders? Despite the political noise, it’s clear that charter schools are a great use of public resources when it comes to what really matters: outcomes for students. As purse strings tighten, leaders should keep that in mind. 

Successful businesses follow a simple practice: They direct more resources toward their more productive units. That’s not what is happening in public education these days. If charters were at least funded equitably, it’s easy to see how they could take their performance to another level, providing even better opportunities for their students.

After several years of mostly negative news coming out of public schools, education leaders should take advantage of this opportunity.