Public school districts should consolidate small urban campuses to keep the best ones open as U.S. birth rates plunge to new lows, according to Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab.
An analysis of public data from the education finance research center found the nation’s smallest K-12 schools — those with enrollments below 300 — spend the most at $19,776 per pupil.
By comparison, schools with more than 600 students pay $15,359 per pupil. Midsize schools with enrollments of 300-600 disburse $17,137 per student.
In an update this month, the lab urged urban school districts to close the worst-performing small campuses and keep the best ones open with cost-cutting “nontraditional schooling models.”
The lab argues for clustering students at salvageable campuses while maintaining enough staff to supervise expanded online, combined and team-taught classes. That means fewer electives, athletics and support staff such as school nurses, gym teachers and counselors.
“Lots of schools are going to close over the next few years because districts can’t afford to keep them open,” Marguerite Roza, an education finance professor who directs the Edunomics Lab, said in a phone call. “If a community is willing to make trade-offs, a higher-performing small school can remain financially viable with a smaller and maybe different staff.”
The Edunomics Lab projects K-12 enrollment will fall by half a percentage point annually — about 250,000 fewer students a year out of 50 million nationally — over the next several years.
Ms. Roza said thousands of struggling schools in most major cities are at risk of closing.
School districts in New York City, Chicago and the District of Columbia have stemmed the decline with an influx of illegal immigrants since the pandemic. However, she said they can no longer rely on those numbers as the incoming Trump administration tightens the border.
“Many districts are already hoping their staff will leave so they can balance their budgets with attrition,” Ms. Roza said. “That’s because the pandemic stimulus money they received has run out, enrollments are falling and staffing shortages are largely over.”
The nation’s two largest teachers unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.
Some education insiders expressed enthusiasm about the recommendations.
“It would result in more kids being educated in smaller schools without the disruptions to learning that come from forced school closures,” said Patrick J. Wolf, an education reform professor at the University of Arkansas.
Others cautioned against making decisions based solely on cost efficiency.
“Cutting staff too much could undermine the quality of education, especially for students who benefit from small class sizes, specialized programs or individual attention,” said Julie Giordano, the Republican executive of rural Wicomico County in eastern Maryland and a former high school English teacher. “Additionally, it could strain remaining staff and erode morale, compounding challenges in already underfunded schools.”
Multiple studies have linked historic declines in U.S. math and reading scores to a pandemic-era shift to virtual and hybrid learning at public campuses.
In September, the National Council on Teacher Quality recommended team teaching, flexible scheduling and paying some teachers more to teach bigger classes as most teachers expressed frustration with pandemic-era learning losses and student behavior problems.
The Edunomics Lab update praised public charter schools — independently managed public schools established under state charters — as models of efficiency run by smaller staffs wearing “multiple hats.”
Charter schools have long improved student outcomes while spending roughly 70% of what traditional school districts spend, said Nina Rees, a school choice advocate who was an Education Department official in the George W. Bush administration.
“Charter schools have been able to remain relatively small at a fraction of the cost of sending kids to public schools,” said Ms. Rees, who praised the Edunomics Lab recommendations.
Recent reports suggest it could be decades before K-12 enrollment improves.
In April, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the U.S. birth rate slid to its lowest point in over a century last year, as the agency tallied 3.6 million newborns and 54.4 births per 1,000 women.
The nonprofit Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education estimated this month that the headcount of public and private high school graduates will fall by more than half a million — or 13% — to less than 3.4 million by 2041, reversing decades of growth.
Stewart Roberson, a University of Virginia education professor, said inflation is another factor calling for budget cuts at shrinking urban campuses.
“The ideas mentioned by Roza, and others like them, can serve as a means of mitigating enrollment loss,” said Mr. Roberson, a former public middle and high school principal in Fredericksburg who also served as superintendent of Falls Church City Public Schools.
