25% of K-12 Schools and 40% of High Poverty Schools Set to Fire Teachers

Written by Chriss W. Street

Rand Corporation released a survey demonstrating that over a quarter of all American school district and almost 40 percent of high poverty communities anticipate lower revenues for the 2025–2026 school year and plan to balance budgets by firing teachers.

The Biden Administration passed Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act and the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations (CRRSA) for CARES ESSER to allocate nearly $189 billion in Covid-19 relief funds to school districts from August 2021 through June 2024.

Despite funding being designed for an interim period, about 83 percent of K-12 school districts added staff.  The school districts’ top two uses of K-12 CARES funding was a 69 percent added staff for Social and Emotional Learning and 59 percent added staff for Multi-tiered Services and Supports to “help students recover from Covid-19 Setbacks.”  

Rand found that the vast majority of K-12 school districts did not plan for the expiration of CARES programs that was providing about 10 percent of total K-12 school budgets.  All the school districts expect lower funding 2024–2025 and 2025–2026 school years.  

Most K-12 school districts made substantial investments in computing and devices during the 3-year Covid-19 funding.  Rand stated that “Virtually all surveyed districts (97 percent) planned to continue providing Chromebook computing devices for students.” 

Although most K-12 districts were confident that they could address the loss of federal funding though staff natural attrition, rather than layoffs.  But the 25 percent of all districts, and the almost 40 percent of all high-poverty districts now facing significant deficits due to the loss of CARES funds, are moving forward by terminating teachers.  

One of the greatest challenge to managing school costs is that administrators are self-interested in maximizing employment headcount, because they are directly compensated under “spans-of-control” formulas based on employee headcount.  

The Rand survey did not find any K-12 district that planned to address lower funding    by terminating administrators or reducing administrators through natural attrition.