A ‘perfect storm’ could change America’s public schools for years to come

Consider it a lesson in civic engagement.

On an overcast morning in late April, a small group of students gathers outside Vergennes Union High School. They wave signs reading “We are Vermont’s future” and “Vote yes! It’s for the best.” When passing motorists honk, a chorus of hoots follows. 

Two failed school budget proposals, layoff notices sent to staff, and potential program cuts have brought them here. Most students can’t vote, nor do they pay property taxes. Yet the complex – and contentious – world of school finance policy is suddenly hitting closer to home.

If the Addison Northwest School District’s third proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year fails to garner community members’ approval, what will happen to their teachers? Or to band and foreign language programs?

“As I’m thinking about applying to colleges, it’s really scary to think I might not have these opportunities,” says Quincy Sabick, a sophomore who serves as a nonvoting student representative on the school board.

In U.S. school systems, springtime brings more than just standardized testing and graduations. It’s also when leaders craft and seek approval for district budgets, which can range from the low millions to several billion dollars. This year it has been messy. 

From small New England towns to sprawling Western cities, school districts are grappling with a financial reckoning caused by what some describe as a perfect storm. Sluggish birth rates and shifts toward other education settings have led to declining enrollment in public schools. The federal government’s robust pandemic aid package is expiring later this year. And inflation has saddled districts with higher costs for everything from classroom supplies to employee health care.

“We’re about to enter another period where we’re going to be reimagining education again because of cuts and the losses that we’re about to see,” says Qubilah Huddleston, policy lead on equitable school funding for The Education Trust.

As the saying goes, necessity often breeds ingenuity. When it comes to balancing school budgets, tough decisions – however forward-thinking they may be – impact the very people schools serve.

Lay off teachers? Classroom sizes swell. Cut transportation? Students risk longer walks. Close an entire school? Communities lose a central hub.

It’s a tightrope walk that people like Sheila Soule, superintendent of Addison Northwest School District, find themselves navigating. Even the most transparent decision-making, she says, tends to arouse suspicion. She worries about the long-term ramifications for public education as a valued good.

“There’s just this general sort of mistrust,” she says. “And I don’t know quite how to remedy that.”

Deficits of $40 million, $100 million – and more

Nearly 100,000 public schools exist across the United States – some no bigger than one room, others the size of suburban malls. Many sit in the neighborhoods they serve, tucked among apartments, houses, parks, and storefronts. They’re often a community gathering spot, whether for art fairs, choir concerts, football or basketball games, or nonschool events on campus.

Schools also act as a common denominator. Many adults went to public school and today have a child or grandchild attending one. These connections yield strong emotions and opinions. In recent years, these have bubbled over regarding how history is taught, what books can line library shelves, and what rights LGBTQ+ students can have.

The latest tension point revolves around money. The numbers coming out of school board rooms over the past few months have painted a grim picture.

In the Twin Cities in Minnesota, the school districts serving St. Paul and Minneapolis projected budget deficits totaling $107 million and $110 million, respectively. The Fort Worth, Texas, school district declared a $44 million budget gap. Up north, the Anchorage School District in Alaska pegged its shortfall at $98 million. And in Cleveland, the deficit stood at $143 million.

Widespread closures – once unthinkable – are being considered from coast to coast. In Seattle, the school board has proposed closing 20 elementary schools – roughly a quarter. Boston, which has in the past decade lost 8,000 students (about 13%), released a plan in January that could have closed as many as half of its 119 buildings. This spring, the district pivoted, and the last stand-alone middle school is the only closure proposed. Two others that share a campus would officially consolidate.

On one hand, underenrolled schools may not be able to provide enough academic offerings to students. But experts raise equity concerns if closures disproportionately affect students of color or low-income communities, especially if they don’t have access to other high-performing schools.

Almost inevitably, these difficult decisions trigger, at the very least, raised eyebrows and defensiveness.

“It’s sort of the playbook, when a district says we’re going to make X-Y-Z hard decision, the answer is, ‘Oh yeah, you aren’t very good at the numbers,’” says Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University. She would rather districts seek more community buy-in by saying, “‘We have some choices to make ... and we want your input.’”

In Wichita, Kansas, leaders of the urban district framed a difficult decision as a choice between people or places. They announced in January a $42 million deficit, which they say stemmed from enrollment declines, facility maintenance needs, and expiring pandemic federal aid. The last one helped plug a budget hole the prior year.

The district’s student count had dropped 8% over the past seven years, according to data from the Kansas State Department of Education. With no rebound visible on the horizon, that means fewer per-pupil dollars from the state flowing into the district coffers.

To help overcome the multimillion-dollar budget gap, leaders proposed closing six schools, rather than laying off teachers and staff or dipping into reserve funds. The displaced students and staff would find homes in other schools. The district, meanwhile, could keep mental health supports added during the pandemic.

Superintendent Kelly Bielefeld, who took the reins of Wichita Public Schools last summer, says the district prioritized people based on feedback from the field. But that doesn’t mean everyone is satisfied with the decisions.

“We’re being told, ‘Trust us,’ and it’s hard to trust when you’re being presented that we are in this position, seemingly out of nowhere, where we’re $42 million short,” says Mike Harris, vice president of the local teachers union, United Teachers of Wichita. “Why do we not have time to discuss other options?”

In February, seventh grader Tirriannah Issa confidently strides toward a podium at a public hearing. Her mother has spoken earlier in the evening along with other parents. They expressed concern about disruptions their children would face acclimating to a new school, longer walks in high-crime neighborhoods, and empty school buildings adding to the blight.

Now, it is Tirriannah’s turn. She rattles off reasons closing Jardine STEM and Career Explorations Academy would hurt her: Fractured relationships with friends and teachers. Transportation hurdles to a new school. Loss of extracurricular activities.

“I know that I’m not an adult, but I hope you all take my opinion into consideration before making this decision,” she pleads.

Four days later, the Wichita school board votes to close her school and five others. 

Pam Dawson, a social studies teacher at Jardine, once thought she would retire there. But she harbors more concern for her students, who call her “Mama D.”

Many of the neighborhood children come from low-income families, she says. When Jardine lets out for the day, they walk to a nearby elementary school to pick up younger siblings. The closure may disrupt that sibling care arrangement, she says, depending on where the older children end up being placed.

“They don’t have the ability to move and put them in a different neighborhood,” Ms. Dawson says. “They really just are stuck doing whatever.”

Mr. Harris, the union leader, says he is eager to learn more about the strategic plan, but he wishes the vision could have been shared before the school-closing decision.

The public needs education about how school funding works at the federal, state, and local levels, he says. That would require more candid discourse from leaders.

“Politics is what gets in the way of that,” Mr. Harris says.

Mr. Bielefeld says he expected the board’s decision to be emotional, especially for the roughly 2,100 affected students and their families. He’s hoping smooth transitions – and displaced teachers filling vacancies at other schools – mend their concerns over time.

“If we can staff every school, that will build back trust, too,” he says. “There are schools that have gone two or three years without a science teacher.”

Property tax hikes of up to 24%

In Vermont’s state capital, the board governing the Montpelier Roxbury Public Schools made a similar decision.

It started in early March with Town Meeting Day, a centuries-old tradition in which residents gather to vote on local issues and budgets. Voters rejected the Montpelier Roxbury Public Schools’ proposed budget for fiscal year 2025, which would have increased property taxes for Montpelier residents by 24%.

The failure, while unusual in Montpelier, wasn’t an anomaly. Voters rejected nearly one-third of school budgets in Vermont, signaling opposition to – or pure inability to pay – steeper property taxes. 

There were many causes for the budget increase, including declining enrollment, a new education funding formula, the winding down of federal pandemic aid, and inflationary pressures, such as a 16% increase in employee health insurance.

Put more simply, as Vermont’s residents age, there are fewer children. And with high housing costs and a lack of industries attracting families, school budgets are squeezing homeowners.

“If we want to keep that bucolic, historical nature that Vermont is known for and we all love about living here, then we have to pay for it,” says Libby Bonesteel, superintendent of Montpelier Roxbury Public Schools. “Right now, our communities are saying, ‘No, we don’t want to pay for that.’ And so that’s a tricky dilemma.”

Given those headwinds, the Montpelier Roxbury district’s board opted to close the Roxbury Village School, which serves roughly 40 students from kindergarten through fourth grade. The closure would trim roughly $1 million from the district budget. That reduction, along with others, would bring the property tax increase for Montpelier residents down to 14%. (On a $400,000 house, that would translate to an additional $700 annually.)

For residents in tiny Roxbury, a village in a rugged mountainous region, the decision felt like a betrayal. In 2017, Roxbury, which then operated its own district, merged with Montpelier – in part because of the bigger district’s good reputation, says Jon Guiffre, chair of the Roxbury Selectboard. 

Residents viewed the merger as an economic decision as much as an educational one. If families wanted a quieter pace of life but the benefits of the Montpelier district, they could move to Roxbury. Half a dozen families did so, he says, bringing children to the aging village.

Now, the fate of the white schoolhouse is unclear. So is the future of Roxbury itself, Mr. Guiffre says. Will people leave?

“When you don’t have people moving here, you can die a pretty slow death as a community,” he says, as residents head in to the community hall to vote on the district’s second proposed budget.

Across the street, Chris Rich and Danielle Dickinson attempt to wrangle their daughters, who are playing basketball and climbing a jungle gym outside Roxbury Village School. They say their younger daughter, Maddison, a third grader, started making friends and focusing more in the classroom this year.

Her parents don’t want to see those gains undone by a long bus ride or difficulty fitting in at a new school in Montpelier. 

As for Maddison, she identifies one emotion about her school closing: “Sad, because I’m going to miss this place.”

Schools asked to do more, with less money

Not all financially strapped school districts are opting for building closures. At least not yet.

Minneapolis Public Schools, for instance, has proposed a budget that resists closing schools but comes with other trade-offs: increasing class sizes, ending fifth grade instrumental music, and eliminating assistant principals at elementary schools, among other changes. A presentation in March noted that the district is using a “one-time bridge” from its unassigned fund balance to cover the gap.

As districts mull their options, the public’s perception of what schools spend versus what educators feel they need to provide could be a complicating factor. Nowadays, schools are providing more than textbooks and instruction. 

“We’ve certainly moved more into seeing public schools as places where we want to treat all the various needs that kids come into schools with,” says Michael Hansen, a senior fellow in the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution.

The Dragonfly and Monarch rooms at Milton Elementary School in Vermont are an example. Filled with yoga mats, art supplies, puzzles, and books, they’re spaces where children who are anxious, fidgety, or upset can come to regulate their emotions and then head back to class more able to focus. The rooms opened this year in response to the increasing number of students experiencing mental health or behavioral challenges. District leaders say too many students were “eloping” – their term for ditching class – and wandering the hallways.

“We have a lot of kiddos who are desperately in need,” says Shelby Haselman, a restorative practices coordinator who oversees the Dragonfly room. “We could have 100 kids enrolled in this room, I’m sure.”

Many states have made historic education investments in recent years, says Daniel Thatcher, a senior fellow for education at the National Conference of State Legislatures. But inflation chipped away at those gains, he says, given rising costs for expenses outside the classroom, such as health insurance, pensions, and transportation.

Even wages haven’t necessarily kept up with revenue increases. A new report by the Reason Foundation, a libertarian think tank, found that from 2002 to 2020, inflation-adjusted average teacher salaries fell slightly while education dollars increased.

During that same period, spending on pupil support services increased nearly 53%, including social work, counseling, medical care, dental screenings, and speech therapy. 

The report’s authors offered this warning: “Putting it all together – enrollment declines, learning loss, unsustainable budgets, union activism, curricular battles, and the rise of school choice – public education is clearly at a crossroads, and the decisions made today will shape generations to come.”

“Why put our family through that?”

So where does that leave school districts?

In Vermont, Patrick Reen sees only one path forward: infrastructure changes.

As superintendent of the Mount Abraham Unified School District, he has been eyeing this moment for years. Over the past three decades, enrollment peaked at 2,045 students in 1998. This past school year, the district’s student count dropped to a low of 1,155. 

At Robinson Elementary School, a first grade class roster includes eight students – seven girls and one boy. Down the hall, a merged third- and fourth-grade class serves 25 students. As Mr. Reen pokes his head into the first grade classroom on a spring day, he sees plenty of elbow room during circle time. 

His visit occurs the same day he will meet with his school board and discuss next steps for the budget, which has failed twice this year. Several years ago, he proposed moving students from three schools into two others and then repurposing the empty buildings into project-based learning centers and a prekindergarten building. Community members, who in his district must vote to approve such changes, didn’t go for it. In fact, one town’s residents were so upset that they voted to withdraw altogether and form their own district.

The district forged ahead doing “the very best we can for our students with what we have,” Mr. Reen says. “But it has unintentionally masked the problem. The mask is off now. People are seeing the pain, and we’re feeling the pain.”

To make education more affordable and sustainable, he believes, the state must consider more school district mergers to cut down the number of administrative offices and underenrolled schools. His colleague, Ms. Soule from the neighboring Addison Northwest School District, agrees. At one point, the districts tried to merge, but voters defeated that proposal as well.

It’s unclear whether districts will receive any help from elected officials in the state capital. Coinciding with many district budgets up for a revote, the Vermont Senate rejected Gov. Phil Scott’s choice for education secretary – Zoie Saunders, whose career includes time as a charter school executive and public school administrator in Florida. There, public school closures are seen as a necessary result of expanded school choice.

Immediately after the vote, Republican Governor Scott turned around and appointed her as interim education secretary.

Vermont does not have charter schools. Ms. Soule says she worries districts’ ongoing budget woes could create an opening.

“It’ll be very easy for charter schools to look like a solution to many of those problems,” she says.

Back in Wichita, the message being pushed by district leaders is one of reimagination. Since last year, the district has been working with consultants to craft a long-term vision for the largest school district in Kansas. 

Mr. Bielefeld, the superintendent, says the plan, expected by the end of June, will likely consist of options for renovating, rebuilding, or maintaining existing schools. Building consolidations may be on the table, too, he says. More community feedback will follow, but depending on the finalized plan, the community may need to approve a bond to fund it.

The yearslong effort is about meeting the needs of today’s students and families, he says. Think more magnet programs, more high schools offering college credit opportunities, and more flexible scheduling, among other possibilities.

“We want to be the district of choice,” the superintendent says. “What does it look like to be an innovative, future-ready school district?”

That may not be enough to persuade some families to stick around. Thomas Montiel has seven children, including five who attended Cleaveland Traditional College and Career Readiness Magnet. The school, which sits in a working-class neighborhood filled with one-story homes, is among those that closed at the end of this school year. 

Mr. Montiel opposes the decision for personal and practical reasons. When he was diagnosed with cancer a few years ago, the elementary school’s staff became a “different kind of family” for his children, he says. On the financial front, he thinks the district could have explored other ways to lower expenses and increase revenue.

Soon after the board’s decision, he says his family is considering education options outside Wichita Public Schools.

“Why put our family through that more than one time?” he asks.

Will voters pay for sports and music?

In Vergennes, Vermont, after students put away their posters and head into class, the waiting game begins. It’s voting day for the Addison Northwest School District’s third proposed budget.

Since the first failed vote in March, leaders of the 868-student district cut roughly $1.7 million from the proposed budget. In this latest version, property tax increases for residents would range from 9.6% to 18%, depending on the town. On the high end, that means one town’s property owners could be paying an additional $318 per every $100,000 of assessed value.

Jeanne Kelly, a retiree who lives in Ferrisburgh, would be among the property owners hit with a high tax increase. She attended an informational meeting about the budget the night before voting. A larger tax bill won’t solely determine how she casts her ballot, she says, but she notes concern. “It’s a good chunk,” she says of the money. “It’s something I hadn’t planned on.”

That’s why Ms. Soule nervously awaits voting results that evening inside the district’s central office. She understands residents feel their pocketbooks are stretched thin. But she also wants to retract reduction-in-force letters she sent out to select staff members. Per contract agreements, she had to plan for the worst-case scenario and give layoff notices by a certain date.

If this third budget fails, transportation, sports, and music programs could be on the chopping block.

Less than two hours after voting ended, Ms. Soule hurries into her office. She draws up one of two emails she prepared to deliver the results to her community. 

“I am thrilled to report that our third attempt at passing the FY25 budget was successful!” the email says. “The official results are 1346 Yes, 932 No, and 3 void.”

She lets out a long sigh, smiles broadly, and hits send. 

“Oh, what a relief,” she says, as she grabs her purse and heads home.