California pays over $100,000 per kid to keep small schools open | AP News
As enrollments decline due to the collapsed birth rate, more and more schools will have fewer and fewer students. Supporting small enrollments is going to be very expensive – when we cannot or will not close and merge schools. In many cases, there are no good solutions.
My state has seen enrollments plunge since 2018, and is forecasting a loss of 100,000 students over the next 5 years. If a typical school was built for 500 students, that’s 200 schools worth of students that should be closed. But instead, many will operate with small enrollments of say, 200-250 students – and the costs per student will skyrocket.
