Burbio School Tracker 7/15: Stops and Starts

1. The recent announcement that the U.S. Department of Education is withholding six federal funding programs totaling almost $7 billion is compounding uncertainty across K-12 school districts. The suspended programs include five Title grants - covering professional development, afterschool and summer learning, English learners, migrant education, and student support - and a sixth for adult education and literacy.  

In speaking with clients, this decision is creating two levels of disruption: districts aren't making purchases in directly impacted categories, but it is also affecting other categories as districts consider moving spending around to cover programming previously funded Federally that they would like to maintain.

This week we take a look at the percentage of district-level revenue impacted by the freeze, using figures from the 2023 census. That census data includes district-level distribution data from four of the five impacted Title grants; it does not include the Migrant Education Program, which is the smallest at just over $300 million.

For this analysis, we included districts with over 20,000 students. Below is a ranking of the top 25 districts by percent of overall revenue being withheld.

At the bottom of this email we have a chart ranking districts 26-50 using the above criteria. 
 
2.  This week we continue our look at 2025-26 budgets for "ESSER-heavy" districts. Below is a chart that shows the expenditure change year-over-year (in blue), and the enrollment change since 2019-20 (pre-Covid).

In addition to gathering district operating budgets, Burbio gathers board presentations and board books that describe district priorities. These are more insightful than district financials, which feature rolled up accounting categories presented in such a way as to make specific district initiatives difficult to identify.  A few excerpts taken from board presentations by the districts featured above:

• Jefferson County, KY's budget provides $2.0 milllion in additional teacher allocations to support Middle School Teams; $5.1 million in additional funding to support Middle School Explore Pathways; and $8.4 million in additional funding to support high school CTE pathways. 
• In Granite District, UT the district's priorities include instructional coaches at every school, continued investment in English learners, special education, preschool, and continued rollout of the district's capital spending plan. 
• Cincinnati Public Schools, OH, is prioritizing Science of Reading, prohibiting cell phones, developing an AI policy, expanding school-based health centers, and expanding career tech, among other initiatives.  

The insights from budget presentations are most actionable early in the school year as districts are still making purchase decisions. 

3. The most important individual in setting district policy is the district Superintendent, and Burbio's Superintendent Turnover Tracker measures changes in that role nationwide. The summer is the high point of changes in district leadership. Below is a state map with the number of new district Superintendents starting jobs during the July 1st-September 1st timeframe: 

Note that in Florida the number is small for two reasons:  1) Florida school districts operate at the county level, and with just under 70 districts, this is a relatively smaller number of districts for its population compared to other states;  2) Just over half of Florida Superintendent positions are elected in November to four year terms, meaning the timing of turnover in Florida is different than the rest of the country.  

4.  Below are districts 26-50 from the analysis described above: