Burbio . . . As Seen in
Burbio in the News . . .
Superintendent turnover surges among urban school districts as pandemic issues linger
September 16, 2025 - " The K-12 school tracker website Burbio shows that burnout has been a factor. The site reported this month that 48.4% of the superintendent departures it tracked since July 2024 involved retirements, 22.2% came from leaders taking other jobs, 18.7% arose from resignations or leaves of absence, 8% were firings, and 2.7% stemmed from contracts not being renewed."
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Public schools gut budgets to cope with Trump axing pandemic grants
April 18, 2025 - "The cuts have hit large school districts with shrinking enrollments the hardest, according to Burbio, a website that tracks K-12 budgets." "The ESSER money, as a one-time injection of funds, may have resulted in some districts buying more than they normally would,” said Dennis Roche, Burbio’s president."
COVID aid funded big repairs at high-poverty schools. Will that give academics a boost too?
July 1, 2024 - "A Chalkbeat review of 7,000 district spending plans compiled by the company Burbio, for example, found that more than 3,300 planned to spend some of the aid on HVAC or air filtration. Hundreds of districts budgeted more than half of their final aid package on air quality improvements."
What the Data Says About Pandemic School Closures, Four Years Later
March 18, 2024 - "As districts shifted toward in-person learning as the year went on, students that were offered a hybrid schedule (a few hours or days a week in person, with the rest online) did better, on average, than those in places where school was fully remote, but worse than those in places that had school fully in person. Source: Burbio audit of more than 1,200 school districts representing 47 percent of U.S. K-12 enrollment. Note: Learning mode was defined based on the most in-person option available to students."
Not all state education funding is easy to track down. Help is here
December 13, 2023 - "With the expiration of ESSER III funding looming in less than a year, help is also on the horizon. The K12 data tracking organization Burbio is now building a clearinghouse of grants and other specialized state revenue streams. The firm’s says its goal is to provide details on the purposes of specific grants, award amounts, application deadlines and district eligibility requirements, among other information."
Burbio Launches State-Level Grant Tracker for K–12 Schools, Districts
December 11, 2023 - "Education data researchers at Burbio have launched a State-Level Funding Tracker newsletter “to better organize” information on special revenue sources for K–12 schools and districts, which can subscribe at Burbio’s website.
The grant tracker is the newest of Burbio’s K–12 datasets, which include ESSER III, strategic plans, school board meeting minutes, CapEx budgets, and more, the organization said. "
ESSER drop: New calculations aim to measure the fiscal cliff
November 29, 2023 - "Now we are going to throw a bunch of Burbio’s numbers at you. The new analysis covers about 2,500 districts representing over 90% of K12 students and the company estimates districts will spend 40% of all ESSER III funding in the 2023-24 school year. A little more than 60% of districts are looking at an ESSER exposure level of less than 5% while about 8% of school systems are facing shortfalls of more than 10%. At the top of Burbio’s scale, a slim 0.1% of districts face exposure of 23%—nearly a quarter of their budgets. "
Schools fine-tune services to address influx of migrant students
September 6, 2023 - "Burbio, a data service for K-12 spending and operations, found several hundred mentions of newcomer, immigrant, migrant students and other related terms in a search of spring 2023 school board meeting documents performed at the request of K-12 Dive. Burbio’s School Board Meeting Tracker service monitors activity in over 1,500 school districts covering over 50% of the K-12 population on a monthly basis."
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K-12 anticipates a summer of school construction
May 10, 2023 - "According to data services firm Burbio, 23.9% of about 6,500 school districts’ ESSER III spending plans — representing about $92 billion — dedicate money to facilities and operations. Repairing or replacing HVAC systems and ventilation is the No. 1 project, followed by facility improvements to prevent illness, according to Burbio’s research as of March."
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Exclusive Data: As Post-Pandemic Enrollment Lags, Schools Compete for Fewer Students
May 10, 2023 - "The 74’s enrollment analysis is based on figures from 41 states provided exclusively by Burbio, a data company, and additional data from the nation’s 20 largest school systems. Since last year, enrollment has declined 2.5% in Chicago, 2.4% in Houston and 2% in Nevada’s Clark County, while New York and Los Angeles saw drops of just under 2%. The Hillsborough County district in Florida, which includes Tampa, and the Gwinnett County School District, near Atlanta, are the only two large districts where enrollment now exceeds pre-pandemic levels.
What are the most prominent issues discussed in school board meetings today?
April 4, 2023 - "These events all play a crucial role in shaping the discussions and agendas of K12 school boards. Burbio, a data service company, has compiled a list of the most commonly used terms in school board meetings across the nation. And to no surprise, discipline ranks among the top three.
Using data from more than 400 school board meeting summaries representing nearly one-fourth of the K12 population, here’s a look at the top five most-used terms in K12 board meetings by category:
School Culture Terms
- Achievement: 26.2%
- Equity: 25.9%
- Discipline: 21.3%
- Mental health: 19.1%
- Excellence: 18.6%"
For poor schools, building repairs zap COVID relief money
February 20th, 2023 - "The data in AP’s analysis came from education market research firm Burbio, which reviewed how more than 6,000 districts across the country, representing over 75% of the nation’s public school students, planned to spend their federal relief money."
Schools on track to meet COVID relief deadlines as spending surges, experts say
December 19th, 2022 - "You don’t snap a finger and do that in a week,” said Dennis Roche, co-founder of Burbio, a data service that tracks school spending. “It takes time."
Pandemic-Related School Closures Fueled Enrollment Exodus, Report Finds
November 28th, 2022 - "Young children, however, are now contributing to some enrollment growth. Data compiled by Burbio, shows that pre-K students boosted enrollment last year in multiple districts, from Trenton, New Jersey, to Provo, Utah. In others, pre-K enrollment softened the blow of declines. "
School Facilities Funding in the Pandemic
November 14th, 2022 - "The report looks at how school districts across the country plan to invest that federal aid, with a focus on planned funding for large-scale facilities related work. The analysis includes qualitative interviews with three school district facilities personnel and a quantitative analysis based on a data set of 5,004 school districts’ ESSER-III spending plans by the Burbio data service."
American Schools Got a $190 Billion Covid Windfall. Where Is It Going?
September 11th, 2022 - "According to Burbio, 62 percent of districts plan on summer learning or after-school programs, allocating $1.7 million on average; 23 percent are planning on tutoring, with average spending of $1.4 million. The cost and scale are often staggering"
Bloomberg cites Burbio survey on school district spending
August 15th, 2022 - "On average, school district expenses rose 5.4% in fiscal 2023 from a year earlier, according to an analysis of 118 district budgets by Burbio, a Pelham, New York-based company that tracks school data. The gains follow a 10.8% increase between fiscal years 2022 and 2021. In total, the districts plan to spend $134 billion in the upcoming school year, up from $126 billion the previous year."
Burbio appears in NY Times piece on "A Normal Back to School?"
August 10th, 2022 - "There is a real urgency around getting school back to normal. Very few school districts are requiring masks — fewer than 3 percent among the top 500 school districts in the country, according to data from Burbio."
Burbio featured in Axios piece on Back to School trends
August 1st, 2022 - "[Schools are] going to help support ... families and students but also engage the students in a way that the school can be become more of a center of their life than it's been since the disruptions," Dennis Roche, the president of school tracking site Burbio, told Axios.
Burbio Featured in Axios Article on Summer School Trends
June 20th, 2022 - "Why it matters: Schools are now reimagining how to continue to capitalize on the summer months — and experts say enrichment programs and other offerings may become a "permanent part of the landscape." "I don't view this as a stopgap," Dennis Roche, the president of school tracking site Burbio, told Axios."
Burbio Featured in WSJ Piece on ESSER III Spending and HVAC
June 9th, 2022 - "More than 2,000 school districts plan HVAC-related improvements, and over 300 expect to invest in windows, doors and roofs, data provider Burbio Inc. found by analyzing how about 4,750 districts planned to spend their American Rescue Plan funds."
The 74 reports on Burbio-provided data to examine 9th grade enrollment trends
May 9th, 2022 - "(Ninth grade) students who were held back are among the reasons Texas saw a 9% increase in its freshman class this year, more than four times the state's annual growth rate prior to the pandemic. The pattern has been demonstrated in more than a dozen states, according to enrollment data compiled by Burbio."
Burbio featured in Bloomberg on ESSER III spending by school districts
April 18th, 2022 - "In a sampling of 10 states, schools had only gone through between 0.5% and 15% of their allocated funds in the year after the money was made available, according to figures compiled by Burbio, a Pelham, New York-based company that tracks school data. Some school groups have asked the Department of Education to extend the deadline.\."
Burbio featured in New York Times piece on mask mandates being lifted
March 4th, 2022 -“This past week was an inflection point,” said my colleague Amelia Nierenberg, who writes the Education Briefing. Today, almost 60 percent of major school districts no longer require masks, according to the school tracking site Burbio"
Burbio featured in New York Times story on Covid 19 school disruptions during Omicron wave
February 28th, 2022 - "Some districts have begun planning on virtual days during periods of seasonal Covid spread, said Dennis Roche, the president of Burbio, a data firm that has been tracking closures in more than 5,000 school districts."
“It’s almost like building a house in an earthquake zone,” he said. “You want it to be a little flexible. You want to build some shock absorbers in the system.”
Buribo featured in LA Times story on K-12 disruptions during January 2022
January 14th 2022 - "On average, about 4% of schools across the country — 4,179 of 98,000 schools — dealt with COVID-19 disruptions such as closures this week, according to Burbio, a K-12 school opening tracker. That’s down slightly from 5,376 schools last week and a fraction of the peak that occurred around Labor Day 2020 when more than 60% of schools were closed, said Dennis Roche, Burbio’s co-founder."
Burbio featured in Education Week story on staff shortages during Omicron wave
January 10th 2022 - "Most K-12 schools remain open for in-person learning. As of Jan. 7, about 3,600 schools—or fewer than 3 percent—were closed, according to Burbio, a firm that tracks school closings and disruptions."
Burbio's ESSER III Data Basis for Bloomberg Story.
November 11th, 2021- "An analysis of spending plans from about 1,040 school districts in 35 states shows how education officials across the country are preparing to tackle learning loss, mental health, staffing crises and equity concerns exacerbated by multiple years of remote learning and classroom disruption, according to data compiled by Burbio, which has tracked shutdowns during the pandemic."
Burbio featured in NPR piece about quarantines.
October 27th, 2021- "A model called ‘test-to-stay’ has also been gaining wider momentum. That’s where close contacts students aren’t quarantined, but they are tested every day for about a week. Roche says they only go home if they test positive. Several states, including Massachusetts, now have a statewide test-to-stay option."
Burbio featured in NPR piece about mask mandates being lifted.
October 18, 2021- "At least a half dozen school districts across the country have recently lifted their mandates, the first such swing away from the face coverings, according to Burbio, which tracks the developments and runs a dashboard on schools. They include Troup County in Georgia, Rogers Public Schools in Arkansas and Northside ISD in Texas, Burbio reported."
Burbio Featured in Story About Back to School
September 28, 2021- "Meanwhile, California is nearly nine times the size of Kentucky, with a population of around 40 million. With masks, ventilation and high vaccination rates, the San Francisco and Los Angeles school districts reported zero to few cases in their first few weeks. The state has had fewer than half of the number of school or district closures as Kentucky, according to Burbio."
Burbio Data Featured in Story about Rising Child Covid-19 Cases in Opened Schools
October 18, 2021- "At least a half dozen school districts across the country have recently lifted their mandates, the first such swing away from the face coverings, according to Burbio, which tracks the developments and runs a dashboard on schools. They include Troup County in Georgia, Rogers Public Schools in Arkansas and Northside ISD in Texas, Burbio reported."
Burbio data featured onschools reopening
September 1, 2021 - "According to the statistics firm Burbio, which tracks pandemic school trends, of the 700 schools in 158 districts that have already closed this year over COVID concerns, the overwhelming majority are in states like Florida, Texas, Kentucky, Tennessee and Georgia."
Burbio data featured in story about The Kindergarten Exodus
August 8, 2021 - "The analysis by The New York Times in conjunction with Stanford University shows that in those 33 states, 10,000 local public schools lost at least 20 percent of their kindergartners. . . . . . . . Districts that went strictly remote experienced 42 percent more decline than those that offered full-time in-person learning, according to a new research paper by Professor Dee and colleagues, posted Saturday. While some of these schools were losing students before the pandemic, the declines between fall 2019 and fall 2020 were significantly steeper."