After several years of the pandemic, school districts across the country are facing budget shortfalls, with the pressure coming on multiple fronts.
A stream of federal dollars — $122 billion meant to help schools recover from the pandemic — dried up in September, leaving schools with less money for teachers, summer schools and other aid that has funded pandemic recovery efforts for the past three years .
At the same time, declining student enrollment — a consequence of lower birth rates and the growing school choice movement — is looming in some districts.
The result: Districts across the country must make tough decisions about cuts that will affect millions of families next school year. The cuts, which many districts put on hold during the pandemic, could interrupt the recovery of U.S. students, who by and large have not made up for their losses from the pandemic.
“I’m concerned that too many state and district leaders have had their heads in the sand about the coming fiscal cliff and are now faced with really painful decisions,” said Thomas S. Dee, a professor at Stanford University who has studied student enrollment trends.
The cuts cover rich and poor areas. In the Edmonds, Wash., school district, an upper-middle-income area north of Seattle, music classes have been the target of district cuts, prompting a local foundation to raise more than $200,000 to try to save them. In Montgomery County, Md., an upscale suburb, the district is increasing class sizes slightly to save money.
But experts say the cuts are likely to be felt most in low-income and urban school districts — districts that have received larger shares of federal pandemic aid and that have also been hit hard by declining student enrollment.
When students leave the public school system, districts receive less state and federal money. Losing too many students can strain district budgets, which come with fixed costs. Salaries and benefits, for example, make up about 80 percent of a typical budget.
In many districts, enrollment has been declining for years. But the pandemic “accelerated that decline,” said Dr. Dee, whose research found that US public schools lost more than 1 million students between 2019 and 2022. About half of the decline can be explained by population trends. , but much of the rest is driven by an ongoing interest in private school and homeschooling, Dr. Dee found.
“It’s been clear for some time — at least two years — that enrollment declines seem to be the new normal,” he said.
High inflation in recent years has also increased costs. Many districts gave larger-than-usual raises to stay competitive, which is now harder for them to sustain, said Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University.
At the same time, many states are experiencing slower revenue growth and “may not really be able to give larger than normal increases to districts,” Dr. Rosa said.
Some districts have used their pandemic aid to help plug budget holes, making the current time especially dangerous.
That’s what happened in Minneapolis, which is losing students and facing a deficit of more than $100 million. About 300 teaching positions are being cut.
Without the additional funding, Minneapolis likely would have had to lay off staff or make other dramatic changes sooner, just as students were trying to recover from the pandemic, said Ibrahima Diop, the district’s senior financial officer.
The district chose to continue investing in education. “That’s what everyone had to do, because that meant you were supporting students,” Mr. Diop said.
Hartford, Conn., made a similar exchange: The district used stimulus dollars to fund 260 positions, including school counselors, social workers and academic teachers — positions that officials heard “loud and clear” were necessary to support students, said Leslie Torres-Rodriguez, the superintendent.
But the district, which has grappled with budget woes and declining enrollment, must now shuffle employees into other positions in an effort to reduce layoffs. “Those districts that are now facing the sharpest declines are the ones that have spent the most money on student services and programming,” said Dr. Torres-Rodriguez.
Some districts have tried to stave off potential layoffs, but even they are planning program cuts.
Baltimore City Public Schools officials have been “very careful from the start” to make investments that didn’t result in steep cuts once aid funds run out, said Alison Perkins-Cohen, the district’s chief of staff. District officials did not use the money to hire new permanent school workers or raise teacher salaries, he said.
Instead, Baltimore provided tutoring, gave one-time stipends to teachers, and upgraded bathrooms, science labs, and HVAC systems.
But Baltimore will still have to cut some teaching contracts and may have to cut summer school next year, programs that had been funded with federal dollars.
Waterbury, Conn., also managed to avoid layoffs, largely because it tried not to hire many new staff members with the relief funds, said Verna Ruffin, the district’s superintendent.
However, Dr. Ruffin said, officials will no longer be able to offer students a 24/7 virtual tutoring program for the next school year. And they should cut after-school enrichment programs that give students the chance to visit museums and attend plays and concerts.
Birmingham, Ala., is among the districts that have made huge academic gains since the pandemic, but now must decide which programs to keep.
A program that gave students extra instructional time over fall, winter and spring breaks produced promising results, according to an analysis by the Alabama Public Affairs Research Council.
But the district now has to cut a session — during winter break — and can no longer afford to pay teachers a higher $60 an hour to participate, Birmingham Superintendent Mark Sullivan said.
A free after-school program that was subsidized with pandemic aid will revert to a paid model, a change Dr. Sullivan was reluctant to make. He knows the cost — about $160 a month, for a single student — can be the difference between paying a bill for many poor and working-class parents in his district.
The district also must cut 70 positions funded with stimulus dollars.
Dr. Sullivan said he has no regrets about making the short-term hiring of mental health counselors, math and reading interventionists and other specialists to get students through the worst of the pandemic. The federal aid represented a rare opportunity for his district, where money is tight and nearly 90 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.
“When you can provide support that students desperately need, even if we can do it for a short period of time,” she said, “I think it’s been worth it.”
