Reports about schools squandering their $190 billion in federal pandemic recovery money have been troubling.  Many districts spent that money on things that had nothing to do with academics, particularly building renovations. Less common, but more eye-popping were stories about new football fields, swimming pool passes, hotel rooms at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas and even the purchase of an ice cream truck. 

So I was surprised that two independent academic analyses released in June 2024 found that some of the money actually trickled down to students and helped them catch up academically.  Though the two studies used different methods, they arrived at strikingly similar numbers for the average growth in math and reading scores during the 2022-23 school year that could be attributed to each dollar of federal aid. 

One of the research teams, which includes Harvard University economist Tom Kane and Stanford University sociologist Sean Reardon, likened the gains to six days of learning in math and three days of learning in reading for every $1,000 in federal pandemic aid per student. Though that gain might seem small, high-poverty districts received an average of $7,700 per student, and those extra “days” of learning for low-income students added up. Still, these neediest children were projected to be one third of a grade level behind low-income students in 2019, before the pandemic disrupted education.

“Federal funding helped and it helped kids most in need,” wrote Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, on X in response to the two studies. Lake was not involved in either report, but has been closely tracking pandemic recovery. “And the spending was worth the gains,” Lake added. “But it will not be enough to do all that is needed.” 

The academic gains per aid dollar were close to what previous researchers had found for increases in school spending. In other words, federal pandemic aid for schools has been just as effective (or ineffective) as other infusions of money for schools. The Harvard-Stanford analysis calculated that the seemingly small academic gains per $1,000 could boost a student’s lifetime earnings by $1,238 – not a dramatic payoff, but not a public policy bust either. And that payoff doesn’t include other societal benefits from higher academic achievement, such as lower rates of arrests and teen motherhood. 

The most interesting nuggets from the two reports, however, were how the academic gains varied wildly across the nation. That’s not only because some schools used the money more effectively than others but also because some schools got much more aid per student.

The poorest districts in the nation, where 80 percent or more of the students live in families whose income is low enough to qualify for the federally funded school lunch program, demonstrated meaningful recovery because they received the most aid. About 6 percent of the 26 million public schoolchildren that the researchers studied are educated in districts this poor. These children had recovered almost half of their pandemic learning losses by the spring of 2023. The very poorest districts, representing 1 percent of the children, were potentially on track for an almost complete recovery in 2024 because they tended to receive the most aid per student. However, these students were far below grade level before the pandemic, so their recovery brings them back to a very low rung.

Some high-poverty school districts received much more aid per student than others. At the top end of the range, students in Detroit received about $26,000 each – $1.3 billion spread among fewer than 49,000 students. One in 10 high-poverty districts received more than $10,700 for each student. An equal number of high-poverty districts received less than $3,700 per student. These surprising differences for places with similar poverty levels occurred because pandemic aid was allocated according to the same byzantine rules that govern federal Title I funding to low-income schools. Those formulas give large minimum grants to small states, and more money to states that spend more per student. 

On the other end of the income spectrum are wealthier districts, where 30 percent or fewer students qualify for the lunch program, representing about a quarter of U.S. children. The Harvard-Stanford researchers expect these students to make an almost complete recovery. That’s not because of federal recovery funds; these districts received less than $1,000 per student, on average. Researchers explained that these students are on track to approach 2019 achievement levels because they didn’t suffer as much learning loss.  Wealthier families also had the means to hire tutors or time to help their children at home.

Middle-income districts, where between 30 percent and 80 percent of students are eligible for the lunch program, were caught in between. Roughly seven out of 10 children in this study fall into this category. Their learning losses were sometimes large, but their pandemic aid wasn’t. They tended to receive between $1,000 and $5,000 per student. Many of these students are still struggling to catch up.

In the second study, researchers Dan Goldhaber of the American Institutes for Research and Grace Falken of the University of Washington estimated that schools around the country, on average, would need an additional $13,000 per student for full recovery in reading and math.  That’s more than Congress appropriated.

There were signs that schools targeted interventions to their neediest students. In school districts that separately reported performance for low-income students, these students tended to post greater recovery per dollar of aid than wealthier students, the Goldhaber-Falken analysis shows.

Impact differed more by race, location and school spending. Districts with larger shares of white students tended to make greater achievement gains per dollar of federal aid than districts with larger shares of Black or Hispanic students. Small towns tended to produce more academic gains per dollar of aid than large cities. And school districts that spend less on education per pupil tended to see more academic gains per dollar of aid than high spenders. The latter makes sense: an extra dollar to a small budget makes a bigger difference than an extra dollar to a large budget. 

The most frustrating part of both reports is that we have no idea what schools did to help students catch up. Researchers weren’t able to connect the academic gains to tutoring, summer school or any of the other interventions that schools have been trying. Schools still have until September to decide how to spend their remaining pandemic recovery funds, and, unfortunately, these analyses provide zero guidance.

And maybe some of the non-academic things that schools spent money on weren’t so frivolous after all. A draft paper circulated by the National Bureau of Economic Research in January 2024 calculated that school spending on basic infrastructure, such as air conditioning and heating systems, raised test scores. Spending on athletic facilities did not. 

Meanwhile, the final score on pandemic recovery for students is still to come. I’ll be looking out for it.

This story about federal funding for education was written by Jill Barshay and produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.

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For Janelle Bell, a 39-year-old working mom, completing her degree wasn’t financially or personally possible. Her priority was providing for her family on an annual salary of just $30,000. Drowning in $40,000 of student loan debt, she was forced to drop out of college and work full time.

Janelle’s story is all too familiar throughout the U.S. — stuck in a low-paying job, struggling to make ends meet after being failed by college. Roughly 40 million Americans have left college without completing a degree — historically seen as a golden ticket to the middle class.

Yet even with a degree, many fall short of economic prosperity.

Data from 1 in 4 higher education institutions shows that, a decade after enrolling, the average salary for college attendees is less than the average salary of high school graduates.

Related: Interested in innovations in the field of higher education? Subscribe to our free biweekly Higher Education newsletter.

A majority (56 percent) of Americans don’t think that a college degree is worth the cost, a recent survey found. College enrollment dropped by 8 percent from 2019 to 2022, and Americans are sending a clear message: They need and want more options than just a college degree to make a good living. With the average price of tuition and fees across private and public universities increasing over 130 percent in the last two decades, who can blame them?

These factors prompt Americans like Janelle to seek alternative paths into the middle class.

As college enrollments fell over the last decade, the number of apprenticeships increased by more than 50 percent, and nearly half of American workers now say they have some form of alternative credentials. Clearly, Americans want affordable, fast, flexible options with a high return on investment.

Policymakers must respond to this overwhelming shift in public opinion and start helping Americans pay for these college alternatives.

One approach: Expand the federal Pell Grant program in order to give Americans greater ownership of their education journeys and the financial freedom to pay for alternative programs that lead to a better life.

Since its authorization in 1965, Pell has awarded need-based federal financial aid to more than 80 million low-income students to pay for college. In the 2022-23 academic school year, 34 percent of undergraduate students received a Pell Grant.

Yet, research shows that Pell students graduate at a rate of 18 percentage points less than their non-Pell peers. In short, the large number of Pell aid recipients is not leading to a significantly higher number of lower-income Americans earning college degrees.

In its current state, the program is not meeting its founding goals. That’s why it’s time to update this nearly 60-year-old federal program to meet the educational needs and demands of Americans today.

During his State of the Union speech, President Biden signaled his intent to “continue increasing the Pell Grants to working- and middle-class families” and ensure that college remains affordable. His fiscal year 2025 budget proposal includes a $2.1 billion increase in federal funding as part of the administration’s plan to double the maximum Pell Grant award by 2029.

But this doesn’t go far enough. We must also expand this access to Americans like Janelle, who need to be able to pay for short-term, nondegree education options.

Related: OPINION: Here’s why a costly college education should not be the only path to career success

Thankfully, the Bipartisan Workforce Pell Act, expected to be up for a full vote in the House of Representatives this year, would expand the Pell Grant program to include affordable and flexible short-term career education programs.

The bill would also create standards for these programs, to ensure that they provide the training necessary for today’s most in-demand industries and meet employer hiring requirements.

Giving Americans more access to educational routes without the high price tag of a four-year degree would create a new, more diverse and skilled talent pool that we could easily connect to employers looking to fill in-demand jobs.

This modern talent pool would benefit the entire economy. Manufacturing, for instance, is still recovering from the pandemic and is hungry for skilled talent. The National Association of Manufacturers recently projected that roughly 2.1 million manufacturing jobs could go unfilled by 2030.

Many of these jobs require training beyond a high school diploma, and short-term programs have proven successful at filling that gap. This is particularly important as more sectors become increasingly tech driven. For example, there is a pressing need for data analytics and digital skills that we know can be quickly taught by nondegree programs.

The median salary for U.S. high school graduates with no college experience is a little over $44,000 — which doesn’t cover the roughly $4,300 a month that a single person needs to afford today’s living expenses.

Americans who completed programs at the national workforce development nonprofit we run are earning wages that are higher than those of U.S. high school grads without a college degree, according to our latest Wage Gain Analysis.

In a study of 2018-22 program completers, University of Virginia researchers found that three-plus months after completion, our learners’ average annual wages had increased from $26,000 to $50,000 — more than 92 percent.

These are life-changing wage increases that can help a family afford long-term housing, allow a parent to go from working two jobs to one or enable these Americans to pay for basic medical care.

After Janelle completed her training with us and landed a job, her annual wages increased by 66 percent, and today she’s a successful technical project coordinator earning $50,000 a year. Her career promises continued upward mobility, opening new financial opportunities that seemed unattainable just a few years ago, so that she and her family can thrive.

Moving Americans from low-wage jobs into family-sustaining careers is possible. Imagine how many more lives could be changed if we gave more people the power to use federal Pell aid to pay for these pathways.

College degrees should remain one of the many learning options available to Americans wanting to further their education. But it’s time for policymakers, workforce development leaders and businesses to advocate for lower-cost, short-term education opportunities, and that starts with passing the Bipartisan Workforce Pell Act.

Connor Diemand-Yauman and Rebecca Taber Staehelin are co-CEOs of Merit America.

This story about college alternatives was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

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Amid the excitement and anticipation that typically accompany the approach of graduation day there hangs a disheartening reality at our high schools this year: many students won’t have the clarity of knowing where their future lies before they walk across the graduation stage.

The delay in processing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid forms has cast an unexpected shadow over their aspirations, particularly for those who are the first in their families to pursue higher education.

The resulting uncertainty is striking hardest at the hearts of our first-generation and socioeconomically disadvantaged students – especially those with undocumented parents – for whom the prospect of college is not just a personal triumph, but often a generational milestone.

The new “better” FAFSA introduced this year was in fact worse for most students because of system glitches and was particularly troublesome for any student with a parent who does not have a social security number.

Our students in this situation will likely not know their federal financial aid packages until after many private college decision deadlines.  The predicament disproportionately burdens students who are already navigating a labyrinthine college application process, often without essential support systems available to their more affluent peers.

We applaud the University of California, California State University, and other public institutions nationwide for extending their deadlines to accommodate these delays. We also applaud those private universities that have followed suit. But there remain many private universities that have not.

Students from low-income backgrounds are only about half as likely to enroll and complete college by age 26, according to the National College Attainment Network. This disparity is further amplified for students with undocumented parents, who may face invisible challenges due to limited finances, fear of deportation for themselves or their families, and a general sense of uncertainty about their place in the educational landscape.

The additional stress of uncertain financial aid deadlines only compounds such challenges, adding another layer of difficulty and potentially dissuading them from pursuing their educational ambitions.

This issue arises at a critical juncture in higher education. Universities across the nation are seeking to diversify their student bodies and attract more first-generation students. Creating a more equitable playing field for all students is paramount in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling ending affirmative action.

The current FAFSA delay throws a wrench into these efforts.

The schools we head in the San Francisco Bay Area, Alpha Public Schools and Cristo Rey San José, collectively serve 198 high school seniors, the majority of whom will be first-generation college students – including a significant portion with undocumented parents.

Their journey is already fraught with obstacles. They already navigate complex application processes, deal with financial constraints, and often lack the familial support that many of their peers take for granted.  FAFSA delays have thrust additional hurdles upon our students.

We need additional collective action on the part of more colleges, demonstrating a commitment to equitable educational access while shielding students from the repercussions of administrative inefficiencies beyond their control.

We also urge fellow organizations and institutions to unite in advocating for a long-term solution on a national scale.

Let us stand together in defense of the dreams and aspirations of our nation’s youth regardless of their background or the federal government’s administrative shortcomings.

Together, we can ensure that the door to higher education remains open for all students.

Shara Hegde is the CEO of Alpha Public Schools, a network of charter schools in San Jose, CA.

Silvia Scandar Mahan is the president and CEO of Cristo Rey San José Jesuit High School and Corporate Work Study Program.

This story about FAFSA and disadvantaged students was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

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MINERAL WELLS, Texas — On many Friday nights in this rural stretch of north Texas, you can find Judith Echanique working the concession stands, flush with local fans. 

“I’m always here,” said Echanique, whose 10th-grade daughter and fifth-grade son attend the local public schools. On this February night, she was serving hot dogs, nachos, soda and candy to boosters of the JV and varsity soccer teams. “I was telling my daughter, even if you’ve graduated high school, I will still always come and volunteer, because I love being a mom and I love being involved in the community.” 

In Mineral Wells — a town of about 15,000 located 90 minutes west of Dallas — community members come together to cheer on sports teams, celebrate homecoming and applaud the school choir.

They’re familiar rituals in rural communities throughout the state, where public schools can play an outsized role, serving as social and cultural hubs, major employers and sources of collective pride and community identity. 

“I truly believe the school district is the heart of our town,” said Melanie Stubblefield, who teaches music in the fourth, fifth and sixth grades at Travis Elementary School in the Mineral Wells district, which has about 3,230 students spread across its seven schools.  

A slate of defiant Texas Republican lawmakers agreed. Last legislative session, they repeatedly refused to support a school voucher proposal championed by their Republican governor, Greg Abbott. The program would have allowed any Texas student to use public money to offset the cost of private-school tuition, but skeptical lawmakers worried the plan would divert dollars from public schools, tightening district budgets without a proportionate reduction in costs.

Republicans nationwide, many of whom already supported such private school vouchers, seized upon the issue following the pandemic, using parents’ frustration with remote schooling as one reason to expand these options. Abbott pitched his version as an effort to empower parents. 

“Our schools are for education, not indoctrination,” Abbott said at an event at the capital last spring. “The solution to this problem is empowering parents to choose the school that’s right for their child.” His office did not respond to several requests for comment.

Related: Florida just expanded school vouchers — again. What does that really mean?

The governor worked to court support by tying the passage of his voucher plan to a $7.6 billion funding boost for public schools that included teacher pay raises. Still, a stalwart group of 21 House lawmakers, most of whom represent rural areas and fear the measure would pull resources away from their public schools, sided with state Democrats to torpedo the legislation. 

“Abbott wanted them to bend the knee and kiss the ring, and they’re just not going to do it. That ain’t Texas,” said Rev. Charles Johnson, executive director of Pastors for Texas Children, a public-school advocacy group. “It is Texan to vote in the interest of your community and constituents.”

Others insist the governor’s plan would have little impact on high-performing public schools, where parents are satisfied and unlikely to pull their students. For parents who aren’t, vouchers provide an alternative. 

“We cannot ignore these cries from parents who are saying, ‘Can we please acknowledge that there are some kids that could be better served with a different option?’ That’s what empowering parents is all about,” said Mandy Drogin, who directs Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Next Generation Texas campaign. “We trust individuals to make the best choices for their lives and their families.”

Now, Abbott is targeting the holdouts, many of whom he backed in past contests, in a manner similar to what Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds did in Iowa in 2022, when she endorsed challengers during the primary, helping elect lawmakers who would support her school choice bill. Abbott has crisscrossed the state to stump for their challengers and used his own war chest, lined with a $6 million donation from a Pennsylvania billionaire who supports private school vouchers, to help power pro-voucher candidates’ campaigns ahead of the March 5 primary. 

In many of these districts, the primary election will decide the winner of the race, with Democrats or other challengers unlikely to prevail during the general election in deeply conservative regions.  

The fight over vouchers generally divides Democrats and Republicans, but along with rural resistance in Texas, conservative rural lawmakers in Iowa, Oklahoma and Georgia have battled with their Republican counterparts over the issue, too. Last year, Oklahoma passed a measure that finally satisfied House Speaker Charles McCall, who hails from the rural town of Atoka (3,000-plus residents) and had previously rejected private-school subsidies in the deep-red state. Georgia has yet to find a measure that all members of the state GOP will back, although Republican Gov. Brian Kemp is trying again this year. 

For some in Texas, Abbott’s primary endorsements represent a betrayal.  

“It was the rural communities that gave the governor his double-digit win. We are conservative at the very core. That’s just who we are,” said Randy Willis, executive director of the Texas Association of Rural Schools. “That the governor wants to go after our conservative leaders and say they’re not conservative enough. It’s just wrong.”

Related: Arizona gave families public money for private schools. Then private schools raised tuition

At a mid-February campaign event in Springtown, Texas, Republican Rep. Glenn Rogers, a two-term incumbent who represents Parker, Palo Pinto, and Stephens County, was on the defensive. 

“These last two sessions have been the most conservative in Texas history,” Rogers told the crowd. “The governor and I have agreed on every single legislative priority. I have supported 100 percent of his priorities except one, and y’all probably know what that is: vouchers.” 

The sixth-generation rancher has conservative credentials. He’s been endorsed by the NRA and the anti-abortion group Texas Alliance for Life and helped pass bills to ban gender-affirming medical care for minors, severely restrict abortion access, shut down diversity and equity programs at state universities and invest in border security. 

Still, his stance on vouchers cost him the governor’s endorsement. Now, alongside more than a dozen incumbents up for re-election, Rogers finds himself in a tight primary race against the governor’s pick, Mike Olcott. 

According to Rogers, nearly 90 percent of the messages his office received from constituents during the special sessions were to voice opposition to vouchers. 

“We need to get away from this crazy talk that Republicans can’t pay for public schools and it’s not conservative,” Rogers said. “There’s nothing more conservative than supporting our public schools.”

Under the proposed plan, if a parent chose to use the voucher benefit, state funding — once allocated to the student’s public school — would follow the student to their private school. According to an analysis from the nonpartisan public policy nonprofit Every Texan, if just 1 percent of the public-school population in Rogers’ district chose to use school vouchers, schools would stand to lose more than $4 million in state money. At a 5 percent usage rate, that funding loss jumps to more than $21 million.

School administrators say that kind of hit would devastate already tight operating budgets — strained by declining enrollment after the pandemic and evaporating federal relief funding. And in rural communities without comprehensive private-school options, residents feel they have little to gain from a voucher plan. 

“We accept all-comers to our school district,” Mineral Wells Superintendent John Kuhn said. “We don’t turn kids away and say, ‘I’m sorry, we can’t handle your disability, or you don’t belong here.’ That, to me, is the state’s responsibility — not to pick and choose who gets an education.”

Ashley Mooneyham, an instructional coach in the Springtown school system, attended the Rogers event with two district colleagues. Mooneyham said she typically avoids engaging in politics, but the voucher issue motivated her to attend and speak out on social media. 

“I never post anything political at all, and I’ve been posting pretty frequently. I’m just trying to get the word out as much as possible,” Mooneyham said. “It’s really scary to me. I don’t think people understand how close vouchers are to getting passed in Texas and how drastically that’s going to change everything.”

Related: School choice had a big moment in the pandemic. But is it what parents want for the long run?

Calvin Jillson, a professor of political science at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, said while he expects most incumbents to survive their primary challenges, Abbott has gained ground.  

“He’s already been successful in a few cases where a member he would have targeted decided not to run for reelection,” said Jillson. “They may have made that decision for other reasons, but certainly, the idea of running against the governor was unappealing.”

Jillson said Abbott could exert even more influence if he’s able to flip even a few seats through his primary endorsements.

“If the governor were able to dislodge several incumbents, particularly respected incumbents who’ve been around for a while, that would put the fear of God in others,” Jillson said.

Despite their potential political cost, vouchers are not a central talking point in the campaign. Although the issue is divisive among Republicans, it’s not necessarily animating. 

Related: TikTok billionaire spends millions on Texas candidates who support school voucher efforts

A poll in early February from the University of Houston’s Hobby School of Public Affairs found that 60 percent of Republican primary voters would be “less likely” to support an incumbent representative who voted against voucher legislation. Yet another recent poll by the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin found that only 2 percent of Republican primary voters listed vouchers as a “most important” issue. 

“The No. 1 issue is the border; No. 2 is property taxes and inflation,” said Rogers. “When we go door to door, rarely do [vouchers] come up, and we don’t lead with it. We lead with the border because that’s what voters care about the most. But boy, if they give us a foot in the door, we’re ready to talk about it.”

Rogers’ challenger, Olcott, has a platform that mirrors his opponent’s on gun rights, abortion and border security. Olcott lists his support for Abbott’s universal school choice plan second-to-last on his website’s list of issues. 

 When it does come up, however, the governor and Olcott pitch the voucher plan as a necessary response to “woke ideology” circulating in public schools, providing parents with freedom to protect their children from indoctrination.  

But rural educators have pushed back on those talking points, insisting their districts operate far from the culture wars of urban centers. 

“That word [indoctrinate] always gets us fired up,” said Mooneyham. “If we could indoctrinate students, we would indoctrinate them to put their names on their paper or turn in their homework, things like that.”

At stake — according to some rural educators — is not just an election result, but the future of conservative, rural life. 

“What are you going to do when that school district that is the main employer of that small town has to shutter its doors, and that little town just disappears? What happens to all of the traditions and all the memories people had of that school district?” said Brandon Dennard, superintendent of the Red Lick school district in Texarkana, Texas.  

“The very thing you profess to love, you’re trying to destroy.”

This story about Texas school vouchers was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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Though college enrollment seems to be stabilizing after the pandemic disruptions, predictions for the next 15 years are grim. Colleges will be hurt financially by fewer tuition-paying students, and many will have to merge with other institutions or make significant changes to the way they operate if they want to keep their doors open.

At least 30 colleges closed their only or final campus in the first 10 months of 2023, including 14 nonprofit colleges and 16 for-profit colleges, according to an analysis of federal data by the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association, or SHEEO. Among nonprofits, this came on the heels of 2022, when 23 of them closed, along with 25 for-profit institutions. Before 2022, the greatest number of nonprofit colleges that closed in a single year was 13. 

Over the past two decades, far more for-profit colleges closed each year than nonprofits. An average of nine nonprofit colleges closed each year, compared to an average of 47 for-profit colleges. 

This time last year, experts predicted we’d see another wave of college closures, mostly institutions that were struggling before the pandemic and were kept afloat by Covid-era funding. Since then, keeping their doors open has become unrealistic for these colleges, many of which are regional private colleges. 

“It’s not corruption, it’s not financial misappropriation of funds, it’s just that they can’t rebound enrollment.”

Rachel Burns, a senior policy analyst at SHEEO. 

For many, the situation has been made worse by the enrollment declines during the pandemic. 

“It’s not corruption, it’s not financial misappropriation of funds, it’s just that they can’t rebound enrollment,” said Rachel Burns, a senior policy analyst at SHEEO. 

Data from the National Student Clearinghouse shows that undergraduate enrollment has stabilized and even slightly increased for the first time since the pandemic, but a continuing decline in birth rates means that fewer high school seniors will be graduating after 2025, so these colleges will face even greater enrollment challenges in the years to come.

Hundreds of colleges are expected to see significant enrollment declines in the coming years, according to David Attis, managing director of research at the education consulting company EAB. Among the reasons, he said, are declining birthrates, smaller shares of students choosing college, and college-going students veering toward larger and more selective institutions.

By 2030, 449 colleges are expected to see a 25 percent decline in enrollment and 182 colleges are expected to see a 50 percent decline, according to an EAB analysis of federal enrollment data. By 2035, those numbers are expected to rise to 534 colleges expecting a 25 percent decline and 227 colleges expecting a 50 percent decline; by 2040, a total of 566 colleges are expected to see a 25 percent decline and 247 are expected to see a 50 percent decline, according to  EAB’s analysis. 

These are predictions, of course, and they certainly don’t ensure that all those colleges will close. But with these drops in enrollment expected to continue, colleges need to plan now and make significant changes in order to survive, Attis said.

“Imagine if you lose half your students – that is a threat to your continued existence.”

David Attis, managing director of research at the education consulting company EAB.

“Imagine if you lose half your students – that is a threat to your continued existence,” Attis said. “You’ll have to make some pretty dramatic changes. It’s not just a ‘We’ll cut a few academic programs,’ or ‘We’ll trim our administrative staff a little bit.’ That requires a real reorientation of your whole strategy.”

Many colleges face the decision to merge with another institution or close down entirely, Attis said. And if they wait too long to find a college to merge with, they really won’t have a choice. 

“If you wait until you’re on the verge of closure, you’re not a particularly attractive partner,” Attis said. “But if you’re not on the verge of closure, then you’re not as motivated to find that partner.”

Attis said that he’s been surprised to hear from several leaders of regional colleges – both private and public – that they are in talks about mergers. 

“Whether they’ve pursued them or not, they’ve either made a call or gotten a call,” Attis said. “They’re thinking about it in a way I hadn’t heard in the past.” 

This story about college closures was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter. Listen to our higher education podcast.

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As Columbia University puts the last touches on its brand-new campus in Harlem, it has reached a milestone: The university is now the largest private landowner in New York City.

In a city where land is more valuable than almost anywhere in the nation, the school now owns more than 320 properties, with a combined value of nearly $4 billion. The growth has helped it stay competitive within the Ivy League and meet its broader ambitions to become a global institution.

By many measures, those ambitions have also helped lift the city around it, attracting higher numbers of students, producing new jobs and boosting New York’s reputation as an international center of knowledge.

But as Columbia has expanded its footprint, it has also become more of a drain on the city budget because of a state law more than 200 years old that allows universities, museums and other nonprofits to pay almost no property taxes.

The law saves Columbia more than $182 million annually, according to an analysis by The New York Times. The amount has soared from $38 million just 15 years ago as the university has bought up more properties and their value has increased.

Columbia’s property tax savings, which are a fraction of its $14.3 billion endowment, far exceed the tax breaks granted to many high-profile commercial developments, including large-scale sites like Hudson Yards. They are 50 percent larger than those at Yankee Stadium and greater than the combined tax deals for Citi Field and Madison Square Garden.

Even as Columbia has swallowed up more land, it has taken fewer students from New York City. Since 2010, the number of city students enrolled in Columbia’s undergraduate ranks has declined by 37 percent.

Nearly every state has property tax exemptions for nonprofits, including universities, which are exempt from paying taxes on their academic buildings and dormitories. (Universities, including Columbia, pay tax on properties they own that are not used for educational purposes.)

But they are often contentious, and the seven other Ivy League universities pay some property taxes on those buildings or voluntarily pay millions of dollars every year to their local governments and school districts.

Not one university in New York City does, including two of the nation’s wealthiest institutions, Columbia and N.Y.U., which had property tax savings of $145 million this year.

“I call them the untouchables: I can’t think of anyone who has been willing to take on this issue,” said Harvey Robins, who worked for Mayor Edward I. Koch and Mayor David N. Dinkins and has followed the issue of tax exemptions for universities. “It’s really important that we begin a conversation finally about who pays what and who subsidizes whom.”

A Columbia University spokeswoman, Samantha Slater, pointed to $170 million in contributions the university had pledged to the community near its campuses starting in 2009, saying the investments “have been a model for similar investments by other universities.”

“The effect is the same — forging partnerships with the city and local organizations to invest in the economic development of the community,” she said in a statement. She did not respond to specific questions about the institution’s property tax savings and whether it had considered making annual payments to the city.

The debate may have been muted in New York because the city has other major revenue streams, such as Wall Street. Columbia has also spent more than $2 million over the last five years to retain some of the city’s most prominent lobbying firms, who meet with officials, including the mayor, on a number of issues, including its real estate interests.

“They have a very powerful board, they talk to the mayor. I think it should be looked at, particularly in the years coming up. If you look at the budget deficits, they’re massive.”

Gale Brewer, a councilwoman and former Manhattan borough president

But with financial challenges looming, a growing number of city and state officials are re-examining the longstanding exemptions for private universities. Property tax revenue accounts for more than 40 percent of the city’s total tax collections.

Columbia’s contribution probably would be small in the scheme of the more than $31 billion the city collects every year. But it is also significantly more than some of the expenses that city leaders haggled over during budget negotiations this year. Programs serving inmates at the troubled Rikers Island jail complex were cut, for example, and the budget for free preschool for 3-year-olds was reduced.

In the coming year, federal pandemic funds — which the city has leaned on to shore up public school budgets and other services — are drying up, even as the city says it expects to spend billions to manage an influx of migrants from the southern border. Mayor Eric Adams has asked city agencies to cut their budgets by 5 percent by November and has said the Police and Fire Departments, among others, will need to slice overtime.

Gale Brewer, a councilwoman and former Manhattan borough president, said she was among those the university has lobbied in recent years, mostly in connection with faculty housing. She said she was not sure why city officials have not asked Columbia and N.Y.U. to make annual payments.

“They have a very powerful board, they talk to the mayor,” she said. “I think it should be looked at, particularly in the years coming up. If you look at the budget deficits, they’re massive.”

‘Civic project’ or ‘land grab’?

The state’s tax breaks for nonprofits date to 1799, long before Columbia and other higher education institutions became vast enterprises with billion-dollar endowments. At the time, the country’s first universities were primarily connected to religious denominations and were deemed charitable enterprises.

Columbia opened in 1754 and moved in the early 20th century to its core Morningside Heights campus, where it confined itself for nearly a century. In 1968, it abandoned its move to construct a gym on the edge of Harlem — a project that was derided as “Gym Crow” — after enormous protests. Then, in the early 2000s, Columbia administrators, led by its president at the time, Lee C. Bollinger, said the university could no longer remain competitive without a larger campus.

To help Columbia expand, New York State condemned land in 2008 in the West Harlem neighborhood of Manhattanville and used eminent domain to seize properties for the university. The university made promises to be a good neighbor and hire local workers. 

“There was a time when Columbia really turned its back on where it was located,” Bollinger said in a 2006 interview with The Times. “I wanted to take exactly the opposite approach.”

Bollinger, who declined to comment for this article, told community leaders and neighborhood groups that the university had changed since the 1968 upheaval. 

A lawsuit briefly halted the Bollinger plan because judges agreed it was not a “civic project.” Nick Sprayregen owned self-storage warehouses in West Harlem and fought Columbia’s efforts to buy his properties. “This is a really nothing more than a land grab of the most extreme type,” Sprayregen said in 2007. He died in 2016.

A higher court allowed the project to go forward. Columbia moved several dozen residents to a 12-story condominium building and gave them $7,000 each.

As it expanded, the university said that it spent at least $600 million with local firms, many of them owned by women and people of color, for construction, maintenance and repairs at its campuses — approximately 16 percent of the total it spent during that time period.

The university has also paid out about $104 million of the $170 million it pledged to the community — to local organizations, an affordable housing fund and city agencies like the Parks Department. The university also said it had spent more than $100 million in upgrades to local infrastructure since 2009 and that it would soon pay to replace two escalators at a subway station on 125th Street.

“Columbia continues to prioritize engagement with our local community — from Morningside Heights to Harlem, Washington Heights and beyond,” Slater, the Columbia spokeswoman, said in a statement. “We focus on meaningful investments that provide local jobs and economic opportunity, along with sustainable community partnerships.”

Maritta Dunn, the former chairwoman of Community Board 9 who lives across the street from the new campus, praised it. “It gives the local community a nearby pretty park with trees, benches and tables,” she said.

But some residents said the university ultimately hired few local residents, overlooked local companies for much of the work and has not been as welcoming to neighbors as promised.

“It didn’t happen the way I thought it should have happened,” said Walter J. Edwards, the founder of the Harlem Business Alliance whose company, Full Spectrum, helped renovate a 1920s building on the new campus. “If you are displacing us, give us something.”

Altagracia Hiraldo, who runs the Dominican Community Center, said she had hoped for more, including the chance for neighborhood nonprofits like hers to work on campus.

“They forgot about us,” Hiraldo said.

Since the expansion, Columbia’s new properties in West Harlem have more than doubled the market value of the neighborhood, and they are now valued at $644 million. The centerpiece of the campus is the Jerome L. Greene Science Center, a massive glass and steel structure. Additional buildings are under construction, including a 34-story residential tower for graduate students and faculty.

Because Columbia took over properties that had been paying taxes, the city now collects half the annual property taxes that it collected on that land in 2008, The Times found.

Taking more space, but not more students

Local public schools have questioned Columbia’s commitment to its surrounding community. As recently as 2010, a quarter of Columbia’s undergraduate students came from New York City: 2,236 students. By 2022, that number had decreased to 1,416, or about 15 percent of the student body.

Several administrators at local public schools said that the university, which has been vocal in supporting diversity and affirmative action, has shown minimal interest in recruiting local students, especially children from low-income families.

Its overall student body is 7 percent Black and 15 percent Latino, and 22 percent of students receive Pell grants, which are aimed at low-income students. The racial breakdown is similar to other Ivy League universities; a higher share of Pell-eligible students attend than at some of its peers. (Columbia declined to share demographic data for its New York City students.)

Jerome Furman, a counselor at East Side Community School in the East Village of Manhattan, where about two-thirds of students are low income, said he has had students accepted to every Ivy League college except Columbia in his seven years at the school.

He said his calls and emails about college fairs or students who apply go unanswered.

“The relationship has been nonexistent,” Furman said.

“If New York is such an asset to them, then it makes sense to make sure that New York students are represented in a real capacity in the student body.”

Fred Raphael, the college and career counselor at Boerum Hill School for International Studies in Brooklyn

Columbia would not say how many New York City public school students are enrolled, but said that the number had increased in the past five years and that students from 45 of the city’s public high schools entered Columbia last year.

Fred Raphael, the college and career counselor at Boerum Hill School for International Studies in Brooklyn, where a majority of students are Black or Latino, said that acceptances have become so rare that he doesn’t see Columbia as a realistic option, even for his highest-performing students.

“If New York is such an asset to them,” he said, “then it makes sense to make sure that New York students are represented in a real capacity in the student body.”

Other urban Ivy League universities declined to share enrollment from their home cities, except for Brown University, located in Providence, R.I. A Brown spokesman said on average between 20 and 30 undergraduates from Providence public schools enrolled in a given year — slightly more than from comparably sized cities outside Rhode Island.

Other major universities in the city have a larger percentage of New Yorkers. At Fordham University in the Bronx, 23 percent of undergraduates come from New York City, a percentage that has been stable for the last decade. At N.Y.U., about 17 percent of undergraduate students are New York City residents.

Like Columbia, N.Y.U. has sought to transform itself into a national and global powerhouse. It has been expanding since the 1980s and recently began to build out its own campus, for the most part on land it already owned, including a 23-story glass and steel academic building in Greenwich Village that cost $1.2 billion to construct. After community backlash, the expansion has been scaled back, but the university will pay no property taxes.

“I would bet my life that they are nowhere near the end of their growth,” said Andrew Berman, the executive director of the nonprofit advocacy group Village Preservation.

An N.Y.U. spokesman pointed to the contributions the university makes to the city, including its students who assist in public school classrooms and its relatively large Higher Educational Opportunity Program, which provides college access for low-income New Yorkers. It also noted that the majority of its graduates stay in New York for work and that its thousands of employees pay in excess of $100 million in payroll taxes.

“We recognize the budget challenges the city faces. Nevertheless, we feel the charitable status that derives from N.Y.U.’s educational mission — and the attendant tax policies — is not a one-way exchange,” said an N.Y.U. spokesman, John Beckman. “We are deeply appreciative of those policies, but we also take some humble pride in the many, many ways, small and large, that N.Y.U. contributes to the city’s well-being and its economy.”

New York’s exceptional exceptions

New York is among 49 other states with property tax exemptions for private, nonprofit entities, which supporters say allow them to provide crucial social, economic and cultural benefits to their communities. In the case of universities, they conduct often costly research and public-policy studies and employ people who pay income taxes.

But in other cities, officials have pressured universities to make voluntary payments, known as payments in lieu of taxes, or PILOTs, or similar annual donations. Even within New York State, other cities have charted a different course.

In upstate Ithaca, Cornell University started making annual payments decades ago that have now grown to $1.6 million and are expected to climb to $4 million in October.

Columbia has sought to maintain close ties to many of the people who might put pressure on it to contribute, spending more than $2.2 million since 2017 on firms that lobby city and state officials. The university said that the firms that it employs provided other services in addition to lobbying and spent most of their lobbying efforts on education, research and health care.

A spokesman for Mayor Adams, Jonah Allon, said that the city’s financial problems meant “every option is on the table to ensure we continue to fund city services we rely on.” But he did not directly respond to questions about whether the city had considered asking the universities to make voluntary payments.

Recently, calls for the universities to pay more have been growing.

After then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo proposed a $485 million cut in 2016 to CUNY, the city’s public university system, the union that represents its professors began calling for private universities to help offset the cuts.

“CUNY is the higher education institution that serves the working people of New York,” said James Davis, the president of the union, “and those same working people are effectively subsidizing these tax breaks for Columbia and N.Y.U.”

Assemblywoman Deborah J. Glick, a Democrat who represents an area that includes New York University’s Manhattan campus, has spent a decade questioning the tax exemptions. In a recent interview, the city’s comptroller, Brad Lander, praised the universities, but said they should “step up” to help CUNY.

“There’s just more urgency than ever,” he said.

During the 2021 mayoral campaign, candidates including Andrew Yang and Curtis Sliwa called for ending the property tax exemptions altogether.

But forcing the universities to pay property taxes would require lawmakers in Albany to change state law.

Zohran Mamdani, a state assemblyman who represents parts of Queens, has said he plans to try this year, with a bill that would end property tax exemptions for private higher education institutions with exemptions of more than $50 million in real estate.*

The only private universities that meet that threshold are Columbia and N.Y.U.

Liset Cruz and Emma G. Fitzsimmons contributed reporting.

*Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated how a bill that would end property tax exemptions for private higher education institutions would determine which schools are eligible. It would be for institutions with annual property-tax exemptions of more than $50 million, not more than $50 million in real estate holdings.

This story was produced in collaboration with The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit news outlet that covers education. Hechinger is an independent unit at Teachers College, Columbia University.

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In Hopewell, Virginia, about 20 miles southeast of Richmond, Juanterria Browne spends her days providing child care for children with disabilities, a demographic for which it is notoriously difficult to find care. Browne, who opened Kidz with Goals Unlimited, LLC, in early 2020, was hit hard by the pandemic. Parents pulled their children out of care, leaving Browne, a nurse and mother of three, with nearly $15,000 in unpaid tuition bills. She borrowed money from her parents and paid herself a salary of just $500 that year, so she could continue to provide meals for the children in her care, afford rent and utilities for the center and make payroll for her employees. Even that wasn’t enough. Browne also started working night shifts at a nearby hospital, often going to her second job after spending all day at her center.  

Then, in 2021, the American Rescue Plan Act was signed into law and $39 billion was sent to states to help stabilize the child care industry. Browne received a welcome influx of funds: nearly $83,000 to help keep her business open. Browne used the money to wipe out the debt owed to her by families who struggled to pay after losing their jobs and then had to pull their children out of care completely. She raised staff pay from $10 an hour to $15-$18 an hour. She gave herself a salary of $34,000, which allowed her to quit her night job and work full time at the center. She also used funds to upgrade her playground equipment, buy cleaning supplies and provide a scholarship to a family that was struggling to make ends meet.  

Nationwide, ARPA funds helped steady a rocky industry that has historically been marked by poverty-level wages for educators and high staff turnover.

“Child care, as a field and industry, was already in crisis before the pandemic,” said Michelle Kang, chief executive officer for the National Association for the Education of Young Children. “The pandemic laid bare some of the challenges that already existed.”

While other countries provide support to sustain the operations of child care programs, the United States historically does not. The federal pandemic stabilization funds provided a rare infusion of operating money, a move reminiscent of when the federal government briefly funded child care to support working parents during World War II.

Since the pandemic, nearly 16,000 early childhood programs have shuttered. Between January 2020 and January 2022, around 120,000 child care workers left the industry, many for higher paying jobs, leading to immense staffing shortages and soaring waiting lists for parents who were unable to return to work full-time due to a lack of care. Educators and experts say the federal relief aid prevented the situation from getting worse. Those funds helped keep more than 200,000 early childhood programs open and more than 1 million early childhood educators employed, thus allowing more than 9.5 million children to receive care.

When the federal stabilization funds run out at the end of September and child care providers can no longer rely on this much-needed funding, experts say the consequences could be immense. A recent report by The Century Foundation, a progressive think tank, found an estimated 3.2 million children will eventually lose child care if those federal funds are not replaced.

That loss will hit especially hard in Virginia, where Browne works, as well as in a handful of other states, including Arkansas and West Virginia. It’s estimated that up to half of all licensed programs in those states could close. “Providers are going to do everything they can to hang on,” said Julie Kashen, director of women’s economic justice and a senior fellow at The Century Foundation. “We saw during the pandemic, they went into personal debt, they stopped paying themselves a salary, they’re going to do whatever they can because they know how important their jobs are for supporting children and parents.”

Experts warn that programs will be forced to make cuts or shut down. “Millions of parents will be impacted and some will have to leave the workforce,” Kashen added. “It matters to children, it matters to their families and it has ripple effects beyond that to the economy and states and employers.”

The effect of losing the funds could be even more grim for family child care providers, whose programs are typically smaller than center-based care and rely mostly on parent tuition payments.

“Most of the family child care educators that we work with are not in a position to raise their prices because their parents just can’t pay,” said Jessica Sager, co-founder and chief executive officer of All Our Kin, an organization that focuses on supporting family child care providers. In the years leading up to the pandemic, these programs were already struggling, with 97,000 closing between 2005 and 2017. “We’re going to lose more programs,” Sager said. “That’s a pretty dire situation to be in.” Ultimately, parents will have fewer choices for child care, she added. “These family child care programs are especially important for infants and toddlers and families working evenings and weekends. They’re going to be especially hard hit in terms of the choices available.”

In Virginia, Browne has already stopped receiving the federal stabilization funds, which means she will now go back to relying on parent tuition and state funding that only covers part of the cost for low-income children to attend child care, as well as any private or public grants and donations she can find. Nearly half of the children she enrolls are from low-income families who pay with state subsidies. But, as is the case nationwide, the reimbursement amount Browne gets per child is far less than the cost of providing care. She recently started working 12-hour nursing shifts at night again, driving straight to her center in the morning to check on her staff and the children before going home to sleep for a few hours. “It’s hard,” Browne said. “My body is not going to be able to take much more of working two full-time jobs.”

By the end of the year, Browne would like to be able to offer benefits to her staff. She is planning to open a second center this fall and hopes to earn enough from the two centers to quit her hospital job for good. Many experts and early childhood advocates say the success of programs like Browne’s, however, depends on more federal support. Congress has yet to take up legislation to allocate the needed funds to the child care industry, even though several lawmakers and the director of the United States Office of Management and Budget have called on Congress to act and voters have showed strong support for the idea in past polls.

“During the pandemic, for this brief moment, we rallied,” Sager said. “We did all these things to make programs sustainable. Now we’re taking that money away, but conditions have not fundamentally changed. The end of this funding really feels to our educators like they are no longer essential. Like they and the families in their care are being abandoned.”

This story about benefits of child care funding was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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As a professor, I’ve benefited tremendously by having racially diverse students in my classes. For me, there is no question that the U.S. Supreme Court erred by striking down affirmative action last month.

There have since been many thoughtful and persuasive pieces about the decision, including those arguing that Asian Americans have been used as a racial wedge against Black and Latino students and that “ ‘Race Neutral’ Is the New ‘Separate but Equal.’ ”

Yet the prolonged “for or against” framing of this debate has missed out on how affirmative action is a policy that attempts to address only the tip of the iceberg of racial inequity in the K–12 public school system. Driving that overall inequity is the inequity in funding.

Related: Supreme Court makes its historic ruling in affirmative action cases

Many Black and Latino students never make it to college. Nationally, 37 percent of Black youth (defined as 18-24-year-olds) and 36 percent of Latino youth enroll, compared to 42 percent of white youth and 59 percent of Asian American youth.

In Philadelphia, 49 percent of students who graduated from public high schools matriculated to a college or university, a number that does not account for the 19 percent pushout or dropout rate of students who did not graduate from high school.

Only 10 percent of Philadelphia public school students went on to earn a college degree.

Given these statistics, affirmative action is not the racial justice hill that I will die on. The debate around affirmative action threatens to obscure a broader struggle for racial justice in K-12 education — the fight for racially equitable school funding.

Affirmative action is not the racial justice hill that I will die on.

Nationwide, there is a $23 billion school funding gap between majority white and majority nonwhite districts. Addressing the K-12 racial school funding gap is a more urgent need that will make a greater impact on Black and Latino students across the country.

In Pennsylvania, a 2016 study revealed that the whiter the school district, the more state funding it received relative to its “fair share”; and the more Black and Latino students in a school district, the less state funding it received per student. The fair share calculation, defined by the state, accounts for extra costs related to poverty and the relative number of English Language Learners and other factors.

The study’s author estimated that Philadelphia, a majority-Black and Latino school district, received $400 million less than its fair share.

The inequities are so stark that a Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania judge recently ruled that the state’s school finance system is unconstitutional and in need of reform.

Related: An analysis of achievement gaps in every school in America shows that poverty is the biggest hurdle

Why did the well-intended fair share calculation fail to promote funding equity? And, relatedly, why did some coalition “advocates” undermine equitable school funding proposals? To understand this, I conducted fieldwork and interviews with state legislators and school funding advocates.

I found that powerful state leaders and the most politically connected advocates refused to challenge Pennsylvania’s racial school funding status quo. Instead, they used their positions of power to protect the preexisting policy proven to reproduce racial school funding inequities in state aid and actively thwart racial equity proposals at every turn.

By doing so, they helped predominantly white districts, many of which were dues-paying members of advocates’ organizations, maintain the school funding privileges to which they had become accustomed.

Writing about the U.S., Cheryl Harris, a professor at UCLA, said whiteness “enshrine[s] the status quo as a neutral baseline, while masking the maintenance of white privilege and domination.”

So, while the Supreme Court ruling has placed much of the attention on affirmative action, let’s not lose sight of the fact that so few Black and Latino students make it into college in the first place.

To fight for the many and not just the few means looking beyond affirmative action and advocating for racially equitable K-12 school funding systems.

State legislators who wield tremendous power over education funding and, by extension, the quality of education that Black and Latino students receive, have escaped accountability for far too long.

It’s time to demand that they create systems of school finance that provide Black and Latino students the education they deserve.

Roseann Liu is the author of Designed to Fail: Why Racial Equity in School Funding Is So Hard to Achieve, which will be published in April 2024. She is an assistant professor of education studies at Wesleyan University and a visiting assistant professor of Asian American Studies at Swarthmore College.

This story about the K-12 racial school funding gap was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

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NAPERVILLE, Ill. — Claire Considine, a teacher’s aide at Naperville North High School in a suburb about 35 miles west of Chicago, had lost count of the hardships that she and other school support staff had been through since she was hired in 2019: the trauma and disruption of Covid-19, chaotic online instruction, mask and vaccine debates, and rising behavioral and mental health issues among students.

Now, facing staffing shortages, the district of more than 16,000 students dumped extra work on those who remained. As part of her job, Considine worked closely with students with disabilities, often helping medically-fragile children ride the bus or go to the bathroom. She did this all for $14.25 an hour, bringing home an average of $650 every two weeks. She struggled to afford gas for her car.

In November 2021, she was relieved to hear her union was organizing a rally to demand higher wages for teacher’s aides (also known as paraprofessionals) and other support staff, such as secretaries, health techs, campus supervisors and information technology support workers. Finally, a raise was imminent, she thought — hopefully a substantial one: The district had a $200 million surplus in June 2021. The board had opted to refund $10 million of it to local property owners as a tax refund earlier that year.

But soon after the rally, held the same night as a district board meeting, she and her fellow support staff got their answer: The school board approved a $1 raise, bringing her wage to $15.25 an hour.

Considine, 28, was shocked. On the day of the rally, she had bundled up in her warmest coat to march with a crowd of over 100 to a school board meeting, holding a posterboard board that read: “I love my job but I also need to put gas in my car.” Though nervous, she stood tall and projected her voice behind a cloth mask during public comments.

“I want to stay, but there might be a time in the not-too-distant future where I simply cannot afford to stay,” she had told the board. “I wish it wouldn’t take all of us telling you that we need to work a second job just to barely make ends meet.”

The approved salary increase was less than the $16 an hour that many Naperville North students earned working at Target. An extra $1 an hour was hardly going to make a dent in her car payment or student loans. If she stayed another year, she’d receive another dollar, and two years later, one additional dollar. Support staff also received a one-time $1,000 bonus. In the past, that might have felt like a win, but the inflation rate hit 7 percent that month, essentially negating her 7 percent raise.

Considine began searching for jobs not long after the small raise was announced. In November 2022, she submitted her resignation. On her last day, she gifted a book to her students filled with photos of them together. Saying goodbye was heartbreaking, and she felt guilty leaving her coworkers with yet another unfilled position. “I was sad to leave, but I knew I couldn’t stay. I knew I needed to make more,” she said.

At the beginning of the 2022-23 school year, 53 percent of public schools reported being understaffed, according to the Institute of Educational Sciences. While teacher shortages often get the most attention, shortages among non-teaching staff also disrupt the smooth running of schools. Support staff members often describe themselves as a hidden workforce, blending into the background. Behind every effective teacher, they argue, is a team of support staff, who receive little acknowledgement from parents or the community.

“Teachers can do only so much, so paraprofessionals are the bridge for students to receive the individualized services they need,” said Ritu Chopra, executive director of the Paraprofessional Resource and Research Center at the University of Colorado Denver. “They become the eyes and ears of the teachers. If you’re a special education teacher with a caseload of 12 students and the students are going into general education classrooms, the teacher has to be Superman or Superwoman to be in 12 different places at once. In the absence of paraprofessionals, special education services wouldn’t be possible.”

Related: When kids go back to school, who’s going to drive the bus?

Support staff receive significantly lower pay than teachers, typically working hourly jobs, meaning no pay during summers or school holidays. The Bureau of Labor Statistics lists the median annual pay for paraprofessionals in the U.S. at $21,528, when adjusted for unpaid time off over the summer and holidays, below the poverty line for a family of three. In 2021, 37 percent of support staff worked two or more jobs. “Educational support professionals are actually earning less than they did 10 years ago when adjusted for inflation,” said Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association. “Many are on a form of assistance like Medicaid or SNAP just to make ends meet.”

“I was sad to leave, but I knew I couldn’t stay.”

Claire Considine, former teacher’s aide.

A spokesperson for the district, Alex Mayster, said the district had no comment when given a list of questions related to the school board’s decision. However, he did provide a statement from the district that was released soon after the vote, which called the agreement “fair and fiscally responsible.”

“I am so thankful to have a contract in place that shows our district’s appreciation for the valued members of our support staff,” district superintendent Dan Bridges said in the statement.

Sharon Kurolenko, the president of the union representing Considine and her coworkers, said that the union overwhelmingly voted to ratify the contract, which included additional sick time and maintaining health insurance coverage. It was “a step in the right direction, but there is more work to be done,” she said. “We are committed to continuing to advocate for the respect and wages all our hard-working education support professionals deserve.”

Schools have long relied on the nearly 2.2 million educational support workers they employ. While the number of bus drivers, secretaries and custodians has remained steady or increased modestly in the past 30 years, teachers’ aides and security guards are two of the few positions in education that have seen substantial growth. The number of teachers’ aides more than doubled between 1990 and 2018 as the teacher shortage grew and efforts to integrate more students with disabilities in general ed classrooms increased.

While support staff are often seen as unskilled or low-skilled labor, many positions require a degree, specialized training or considerable skill. Most districts require paraprofessionals to have an associate’s degree, and some states ask them to pass an exam as well. In special ed classrooms, they’re expected to manage high-needs, high-risk children. IT support requires extensive technical knowledge. Health techs are CPR-trained and undergo additional training, usually without any increase in pay, in how to resuscitate a patient after cardiac arrest, stop excessive bleeding, and manage epileptic seizures. According to the NEA, 57 percent of support staff workers in K-12 schools have an associate’s degree or higher.

Related: Tight labor market hits after school

The disruption of the pandemic elevated the importance of school employees such as school nutrition staff, who quickly revamped their programs to serve grab-and-go meals for families who needed the support, said Diane Pratt-Heavner, the director of media relations for the School Nutrition Association.

But 93 percent of school meal programs report staff shortages, and the pool of potential school nutrition employees is being drawn away by restaurants and other employers that can offer more pay, Pratt-Heavner said. For example, when Denver recently hiked its minimum wage to $17.29 — close to $4 more than the state minimum wage of $13.65 — school districts outside city limits reported that potential employees were being drawn to jobs within the city. Even though schools can offer perks, such as weekends and holidays off, they can’t match that higher pay.

“It just has been very difficult for school nutrition programs to compete with fast food restaurants for salaries and benefits,” Pratt-Heavner said.

Bus driver shortages led Massachusetts to enlist the National Guard for help, and in some districts around the country, principals and superintendents began driving buses out of desperation. The shortage of custodians has left teachers and students cleaning bathrooms and mopping floors before and after school.

As schools emerged from Covid-19, staff support jobs did not return to what they had been in 2019. The challenges piled on, and they saw wages rising nearly everywhere except in education. Considine watched three other coworkers leave before her.

“The educational environment got more difficult physically, emotionally, mentally and psychologically,” said Mark Klaisner, the president of the Illinois Association of Regional Superintendents of Schools. “People were feeling trauma. And there wasn’t extra compensation for battle fatigue.”

Educator strikes have also increased across the country since 2020, not only among teachers, but among the school staff who support them. A three-day strike in April closed school for more than 420,000 students in Los Angeles after 30,000 school custodians, bus drivers, and paraprofessionals walked out. School support staff have also gone on strike this year in Woburn, Massachusetts and in Morgan County, Ohio.

At the November school board meeting where they spoke in favor of salary increases, several Naperville support staff discussed the hardships they endured. Logan Aschom, an IT support professional for the district, and father of a 4-year-old, told the board he feared he wouldn’t be able to continue working for the district. “My cost of living is rapidly outpacing and consuming my small increases in pay,” he said.

In a conversation after the meeting, he said most of his paycheck went to his daughter’s $1,500-a-month daycare, and $9,100 in annual property taxes. If it wasn’t for the $1,250 monthly rental income from an upstairs unit in their house, he and his wife, who manages an art gallery, couldn’t pay their bills.

Former paraprofessional Shalandar Phillips, a mom of five, including 6-year-old twins, said her 12- to 14-hour days at the school often meant she wouldn’t get home until 8 p.m. and missed dinner with her family. Even after working those long hours, she struggled to pay bills. She ended up quitting in early 2022, crying with her students and coworkers on her last day. She now works as a medical receptionist, logging only 40 hours a week and making approximately $14,000 more a year than she did as an educator.

Related: ‘More than a warm body:’ schools try long-term solution to substitute teacher shortage

The support staff shortage also directly affects the wellbeing of students and teachers. Without enough teacher assistants, for example, some students don’t receive the same level of individualized attention, which is a particular concern for students with disabilities.

Noah Peterson spent his senior year in a special education classroom at Naperville North last year. He has cerebral palsy, a mild cognitive delay, and wears leg braces to assist with walking. His special education supports require the school to provide a one-on-one aide during the school day. His mother, Jen Williamson, began noticing high turnover in the aides helping her son on or off the bus after he returned to in-person instruction in fall 2021. Sometimes an assistant wasn’t available, so Williamson would have to drive her son to school.

For years, Williamson fought to have one aide stay with her son while he was at school, but as shortages grew, he began having four to five different aides, rotating throughout the day. The instability concerned Williamson. Every year, she gives the school a three-page document with her son’s photo, his diagnoses, surgeries, medications, doctors and allergies; she worries that with the high turnover, this information doesn’t trickle down.

“I’ve almost lost him so many times,” Williamson said, as she waited for her son to come home on the bus from his transitional program through the Naperville district. “The aide is who I trust the safety of my child with throughout the day. It is very important they are aware of his diagnosis and how to care for him.”

Klaisner, of the superintendent’s association, said districts are motivated to hold down salaries as much as possible to keep budgets balanced and avoid raising taxes. “With 7 and 8 percent inflation, we’re talking about a 25 percent increase in three years. Taxes are not going to go up 25 percent in that time,” he said. Insurance premiums continue to increase for districts as well. “It’s always more complicated than the general public thinks,” he said.

In April 2023, Naperville District 203 had 53 open positions for support staff.

As challenging as it can be to work in school support, the position appeals to some who want to work with young people.

Considine, for example, was drawn to the profession to help students who may be struggling, just as she was helped in school. She credits paraprofessionals with helping her learn to read and enabling her to attend college. She was diagnosed with dyslexia in fourth grade, and couldn’t read until junior high, when she received reading intervention and worked one-on-one with a paraprofessional. In high school, another aide helped her prepare for the ACT.

“Now I worry they’re so short staffed, they’re pulling aides away from the kids like me,” she said.

After high school, she hoped to become a speech pathologist, but was worried about student debt. She opted to attend community college, then graduated with a bachelor’s degree in communications in 2019 and moved back home to figure out her next step. Her mom suggested the paraprofessional job, which comes with health benefits. Eventually, Considine was putting in 50 hours a week, plus babysitting once a week for $4 an hour more than the district paid her.

Thirty-seven percent of school support staff report working two or more jobs, according to a 2021 survey by the National Education Association.

To earn a teaching credential, she’d have to return to school and take out more student loans.

“I never thought about being a teacher because I saw how hard it was. But I loved being a teacher’s aide,” she said. Considine didn’t intend to continue living with her mom, but she saw no way out. The cheapest rent she could find was $1,200 a month for a basic one-bedroom apartment outside of Naperville where rents tended to be lower. “If I didn’t have friends or my family, I’d be on the streets,” she said.

Her fears weren’t unreasonable. As in other U.S. cities, the cost of living has risen dramatically in recent years. Rents in Naperville rose 10.4 percent between June 2021 and June 2022, and home prices rose 17 percent during that time. The median household income in the quiet, affluent suburb is around $136,000, compared to $66,000 for nearby Chicago. The demographics of the top-ranked district — 60 percent white, 18 percent Asian, 12 percent Hispanic and 5 percent Black —  roughly matches that of the community as a whole. Only 15 percent of the student body is designated by the state as low-income, compared to 47 percent for Illinois.

Kathi Griffin, president of the Illinois Education Association, has been advocating for increased pay across the state, including lobbying the Illinois House to pass a bill that would raise the minimum pay for educational support staff to $20 an hour for the 2023-24 school year. “For some educational support professionals in our state, their pay doesn’t even cover their health insurance costs for their family. They can go down the street to Amazon and get paid more per hour, yet these amazing people are so important to the success of our students.”

After leaving Naperville North, Considine began working as a receptionist at a nursing home facility two miles down the road. Her starting wage was $17, and she’s already begun training in activities coordinating that she hopes will help her transition to a position earning $80,000 a year. “I just couldn’t do the 12-hour days and the lifting and toileting and bus riding anymore,” she said. “I was burnt out.” She now has more free time and extra spending money to occasionally eat out with friends. She’s even begun saving for the future.

“I have more balance and a better quality of life,” she said. “It’s 7:45 a.m. to 4 p.m. and then I’m done.”

This story was supported by the journalism non-profit the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.

This story about school support staff was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla. — After seeing her daughter struggle in second, then third and fourth grades, Van McCourt-Ostrand wanted options. So, last year, the St. Petersburg mother of two applied for and received a voucher that would allow her youngest child to attend a private school in Florida.

McCourt-Ostrand, whose daughter has dyslexia, had two schools in mind, including one specializing in students with the reading-centered learning disability. She imagined her 11-year-old daughter finally having “peers, teachers, kids who understand what she is going through.”

That hope quickly vanished. Despite school visits, including one after which her daughter declared she had “met nice kids and enjoyed her experience,” she was not admitted. McCourt-Ostrand applied to the other school, but was told, “there is no room for you at fifth grade.”

“We had a voucher and nowhere to go with it,” she said.

Of the roughly 2,300 private schools accepting vouchers, 69 percent are unaccredited, 58 percent are religious and nearly one-third are for-profit, according to the state education department.

Even if her daughter had gotten in, she said, the voucher would have covered only about $7,000. Tuition at the first school was $20,000. It was $18,700 at the second — not including books, supplies, uniforms, tutoring and other expenses.

“I don’t know what we would have done,” said McCourt-Ostrand, “but we would have tried.”

Around the country, the political razzle-dazzle around “school choice” — giving families who enroll in the programs vouchers to spend on a range of school options as they see fit — is electrifying conservatives, grabbing public attention and becoming a GOP campaign banner. This year, states including Iowa, Utah and Arkansas have adopted universal school vouchers, which can be used like coupons for tuition, or education savings accounts (ESAs), which put money into accounts or onto debit cards for parents to use for school costs. Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account, offered starting last fall, has so far enrolled over 50,000 students, many of whom were already attending private schools. Legislatures in some 30 states are considering related moves.

Related: School choice had a big moment in the pandemic. But is it what parents want for the long run?

In March, Florida became the latest state to dramatically broaden access to public money for private schooling. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation making vouchers, worth about $8,500 each, eventually available to all K-12 students, regardless of family income (or whether a child has ever attended public school). The vouchers would also be available to home-schooled students, and ESAs could be used to pay for expenses beyond tuition.

In Florida and elsewhere, the pitches are bold, claiming that: “competition breeds excellence” and that choice will “put parents firmly in the driver’s seat” and is “about giving every student the best opportunity.” Less bold: detailed discussion of real-world consequences.

What if, like McCourt-Ostrand, your child doesn’t get into the school they want or need? What if a school costs more than the voucher’s value (as many do)? How can you tell if a private school is any good? And the big challenge: What does this mean for public schools, which 90 percent of children in America attend?

This historic expansion of vouchers in Florida has many parents and education experts there worried about the impact on public schools and debating what the expansion will cost and how it should be funded. Since 2019, when DeSantis began expanding access to vouchers, they have been paid for by rerouting state money from public districts to private education.

Over the past three years, the percentage of state-formula funding redirected from public to private education has risen from 3 to 10 percent, said Norín Dollard, senior policy analyst and KIDS COUNT director at the Florida Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research and policy organization. Next year, that could reach 30 percent, or $4 billion, according to calculations by Dollard and Mary McKillip of the Education Law Center.

“I don’t think I am being overly dramatic in saying it will fundamentally change public schools to have such a huge amount of funds diverted to private schools,” said Dollard.

“We will be decimated”

Florida public schools have long faced competition. In 1999, Gov. Jeb Bush signed into law the “Opportunity Scholarship Program,” which gave students in so-called failing public schools vouchers to help pay for private or religious ones. After the state Supreme Court in 2006 ruled the program unconstitutional because of its impact on public schools, the Florida Tax Credit (FTC) scholarship, created just a few years earlier, started to grow. It is financed through donations from companies to private school scholarships for low-income students that also lower the companies’ taxes. The number of students receiving FTC scholarships has risen by 62 percent over the past decade, which has no doubt contributed to the overall growth of private school enrollments. By the 2021-22 school year, 12.8 percent of Florida students attended private schools, above the national average; a decade earlier, it was 10.6 percent of the state’s students. 

Under DeSantis, the state also created and expanded (and combined and renamed) an array of voucher programs that cover tuition or other educational needs and services. These vouchers are targeted to students who have been bullied or faced violence or have disabilities, who are low-income or “working class” or siblings of voucher recipients, or who need reading help, among others.

Data from Step Up For Students, the primary group that administers the various scholarships, shows that about 130,000 students received vouchers in 2021-22 through four key scholarship programs. More recent state data shows that, in addition, nearly 100,000 students this year received tax-credit-based tuition vouchers, 81 percent to attend religious schools.

“I don’t think I am being overly dramatic in saying it will fundamentally change public schools to have such a huge amount of funds diverted to private schools.”

Norín Dollard, senior policy analyst and KIDS COUNT director, Florida Policy Institute

With this exodus from district schools in a state where the educational brand is “choice,” ordinary public schools face serious challenges. Step Up For Students boasts that 1.6 million, or “approximately 49% of K-12 students,” already participate in some form of choice, including magnet schools and career training programs.

The challenges are certainly being felt in Hillsborough County, located in an arc around Tampa Bay that includes the palm-treed “Riverwalk” downtown, tony suburban neighborhoods with water-view homes and mobile home parks in rural areas with names like “Plantation Oaks.” A rising percentage of Hillsborough County’s diverse student population now attends private schools —10.8 percent, up from 8.7 percent a decade earlier — or charters, which are public but often run by for-profit companies.

The nation’s seventh-largest school district, Hillsborough County may offer a harbinger of the impact of universal vouchers and “choice” on public schools nationally. Even before DeSantis signed the law, Addison Davis, superintendent of Hillsborough County Public Schools, warned during a school board workshop in February that voucher expansion “will potentially cripple public education.” Similar concern has rippled through the community.

“I give us maximum two years; we will be decimated,” said Paula Castano, a public school parent who, in spring 2021, co-founded the nonprofit Hillsborough Public School Advocates. The group avoids culture war issues like book bans to focus on the threat to the existence of public education. Castano worries: “People just don’t know what is about to happen to their schools.”

One parent, Earlishia Oates, already sees stresses. “I have all the kids from the bus stop on my porch,” she said by phone one day a few weeks ago. The school bus was not just a bit late; it wasn’t showing. She had 10 children with her, she said, and “they can’t go back home. The doors are locked.”

A mother of four who parents another child in her home (“my community son”), Oates works as a community organizer and advocate for parents in public housing. She is “the bus stop lady” because she waits with children whose parents leave early for jobs at Walmart and Family Dollar. When buses don’t show (the district has a shortage of drivers, teachers and staff), Oates said, “high schoolers go back and find something else to do, which is not good.”

Even parents in the county’s wealthier neighborhoods are noticing new troubles in their district schools, said Brita Wilkins Lincoln, a parent and member of the Florida PTA state legislative committee. She cited a request her school made to the PTA to organize parents to monitor students who had to take an AP Physics class online because a teacher retired and the school couldn’t hire a replacement. (The group declined. “That is not an appropriate thing for the PTA to do,” Wilkins Lincoln said.)

When schools are beset with problems, voucher advocates say parents should be able to send their children elsewhere. As DeSantis signed the new law, he said choice forces schools to “perform better because they compete for individual students.”

But Damaris Allen, a Hillsborough County Public Schools parent and executive director of the nonprofit advocacy group Families for Strong Public Schools, said vouchers diminish resources for public schools. Her son attends her old high school and takes AP French, as she did. “My class had 24 students in it; his class has 38 students in it,” she said. “In addition to that, we are seeing reductions in programs, such as the arts and robotics.” The voucher expansion will lead to more cuts, Allen fears, and leave parents “without a real choice.”

Related: COLUMN: Do we need more ‘parental rights’ — or help fixing the real problems in education?

That message is missed by many, said Wilkins Lincoln. “People just hear headlines of ‘We are going to have more choices,’ ” she said. Parents coping with inflation and rising rents “do not realize the significance of what is happening.” Advocates, she said, “sell it as ‘choice’ and who doesn’t want choice? But that is not what this is about. It is about privatizing public education.”

“Choice is sold as a solution.”

Choice is a tough subject in Hillsborough County. The region has grown 20 percent in a decade, but that has been anything but a boon for the public schools. Data from the nonprofit, nonpartisan Florida Policy Institute shows that county public schools lost $75.7 million in state funding to private school vouchers this year — and are poised to lose more than three times that, or $309.4 million, next year. That represents more than one-quarter of the district’s state aid.

Charter school choice has been an even more dramatic challenge to Hillsborough County’s district public schools. Over the past decade, enrollment in district-run schools fell as charter enrollment nearly tripled. This year, district data show that charters serve 34,505, or 15 percent, of county public school students. Because money follows the student, in addition to losses from vouchers, the Hillsborough County district schools are also losing dollars to charters.

It’s a complicated problem. While voucher advocates say funding losses are offset because schools no longer have to educate the children who leave, Dollard says that districts like Hillsborough County cannot turn on a dime. “Public schools have fixed costs, with buildings and buses and salaries, whether the kid is there or not,” she said. Plus, unlike private schools, including religious and for-profit ones, public schools cannot cap enrollment or pick some students and reject others. They must accept and serve all.

“I wish everyone came home to a sit-down dinner with their parents. [But] we are not living in a utopic world.”

Karen Perez, Hillsborough County Public Schools board member

That’s an issue because district schools enroll a higher percentage of students who are more costly to educate. Of the county’s English Language Learners in public schools, 96 percent are enrolled in district schools, not charters. And 90 percent of those with special needs attend district schools, not charters, according to district data.

On top of funding headaches, county population growth has fed enrollment shifts. Now, with uneven moves to privates and charters, some schools are half empty (as low as 44 percent capacity), while others are busting at the seams (as high as 159 percent). District leaders are trying to redraw attendance boundaries to even out enrollments and — critically — save money. But it hasn’t gone well. Parents are upset — and therefore could leave or “choice out,” as one school board member put it, placing the district in an even more precarious position.

District stresses were on display at a Hillsborough County school board workshop in mid-February. In an administration building 15 minutes from downtown Tampa, administrators, school board members, media and 50 others convened in a mustard-walled room with drop ceilings in hopes of gaining some consensus around boundary plans. (There would be none.) Glum-faced parents propped signs before them that read “Say No to 3!” in opposition to one plan. School board members advocated for their neighborhoods. But most people acknowledged a glaring fact: The proposed reassignment plans would fall most heavily on low-income students of color by busing them to different neighborhoods.

Busing the most disadvantaged students far from where they live makes it hard for the students to fully participate in school, including in sports and clubs, objected board member Karen Perez. In many cases, grandparents are acting as parents and may not have a car or be able to drive students who come early or stay after school when there is no bus transportation. “That 70-year-old grandma with cataracts is raising grandchildren; that is a reality,” she added after the meeting. “I wish everyone came home to a sit-down dinner with their parents,” said Perez, but “we are not living in a utopic world.”

In theory, vouchers let students “vote with their feet” and force schools to improve to attract them. They also let families choose a school that seems the best fit. “My view is that these things can be good,” said Seth Zimmerman, an associate professor at Yale’s School of Organization and Management who studies the economics of education.

But details matter, he said, and effectiveness depends on ensuring that “competitive pressures are pointed in the right direction” — which means regulating or incentivizing schools in a choice system to serve at-risk students. “It’s tricky,” said Zimmerman. “What I’m not convinced works very well is saying, ‘Here are the vouchers, let it rip.’”

Related: Supreme Court ruling brings an altered legal landscape for school choice

School choice, ideally, said Thomas Toch, director of FutureEd, an education think tank at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, is not “just giving families public dollars to attend private school,” but requiring transparency — and providing good information — so parents can make informed decisions. Otherwise, said Toch, it “is largely a transfer of public monies to families without a public policy purpose.”

In Hillsborough County, surrounding Tampa, 96 percent of English Language Learners are in district public schools, not charters, and 90 percent of those with special needs attend district schools, not charters, according to district data.

That is a problem in Florida, where it is hard to tell if a private school is any good. There are no teacher certification or school accreditation requirements for private schools, no publicly available school test scores or school climate surveys. Of roughly 2,300 private schools accepting vouchers, 69 percent are unaccredited, 58 percent are religious and 30 percent are for-profit. Only 3 percent of voucher-accepting private schools are accredited, nonreligious and nonprofit, according to data on the state Department of Education website.

“Choice” and a voucher seemed like a solution to McCourt-Ostrand. Reality was different. Her daughter remained in her public magnet school. Fortunately, she is having a good year, but McCourt-Ostrand credits that to good communication with the school and getting an experienced teacher.

Oates, “the bus stop lady,” also understands the lure of vouchers. Her youngest, Russell Stanley, Jr., an eighth grader who plays football, attends a magnet school. One boundary proposal would have routed him to a high school with students from rival neighborhoods. Oates was concerned for his safety. “I would ask for a voucher” if that happened, she said. “I would not have allowed my son to attend.”

Then there’s the practical matter of who can access a private school. Never mind getting in, most do not provide transportation (many charters do not, either). Plus, vouchers often do not cover the full cost. While Oates entertained the thought, she also recently saw her electric bill hit $300 and her rent rise by $500. “It’s not a realistic choice for working parents with rent going up the way it is,” she said.

Which is why parents like Oates and Ashley Foxworth, a single mother, need the public schools to keep working. For Foxworth , who grew up as the daughter of a young single mom who moved a lot, the Hillsborough Country Public schools were a steadying force. “My school was my school and a safe place,” she said. It enabled her success. She graduated from Bethune-Cookman College, earned a master’s degree, then taught for over a decade in the same public schools she had attended. Today she is an educational tutor, adviser and coach.

Her son, Tristen, is now a precocious first grader in Hillsborough County Public Schools. “I want him to be a hawk,” she said, referring to a local high school’s mascot, a school she hopes will still be an option for him to attend.  Foxworth is anxious about what the new law will mean for public schools, and about Tristen’s shot at the same opportunities she had.

“These people who have the economic advantage of having their kids in private schools, they don’t see the effects in the public schools,” said Foxworth. “Choice is sold as a solution — when it’s not.”

This story about education vouchers was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter.

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