Superintendents’ priorities shifted sharply this year. Budget shortfalls and declining enrollment now top the list of district leaders’ concerns, displacing reading achievement and teacher recruitment, according to a new RAND report.
By the numbers: 54% of district leaders identified budget shortages as one of their three most pressing challenges, up from 33% in 2025. Declining enrollment rose from 25% to 36%.
Academic and staffing concerns moved in the other direction. The share of leaders naming reading achievement fell from 44% to 32%; math achievement declined from 40% to 34%; and teacher recruitment and retention dropped from 42% to 35%. That doesn’t mean those problems have been solved. RAND’s interviews with 38 district leaders suggest budget pressures are making them harder to address. [Education Week, subscription model]
What’s Happening
The expiration of federal COVID-19 relief funds is only part of the story. Superintendents pointed to rising salaries, transportation and facility costs; growing special education needs; continued demand for mental health supports; and state funding that has not kept pace. One leader said the price of a school bus had doubled from $80,000 to $160,000 over six years.
Declining enrollment compounds the problem by reducing per-pupil revenue without producing equivalent savings. Buildings still need to be maintained, buses still need to run, and schools still need enough teachers to operate.
Districts are responding by competing more directly for students. 40% are considering marketing campaigns promoting their public schools. A third are looking at expanded pre-K, and another third are considering new extracurricular or specialized programs.
What We’re Watching
Those strategies expose the central tension in RAND’s findings. Districts need to invest in the programs that attract and retain families at precisely the moment they have less money to spend. Increasingly, district leaders are being asked to cut their way to financial stability while investing their way back to growth.
This article is sourced from Whiteboard Notes, our weekly newsletter of the latest education policy and industry news read by thousands of education leaders, investors, grantmakers, and entrepreneurs. Subscribe here.
