Headcounts are down at public schools. Now budgets are too.

Money for schools is driven partly by student headcounts, and emergency provisions in many states allowed schools to maintain funding at pre-pandemic levels. But like the billions of dollars of federal relief money that have helped schools weather the crisis, those measures were not meant to last forever.

“Where did those kids go?” Hutchison asked during a recent public meeting. “Where are they? They didn’t come back this year. That’s what’s laying on that additional reduction in our funding.” Among other states that took steps to protect school budgets, Delaware provided $9.3 million in one-time funding in the fiscal year that ended in summer 2021 to school districts and charter schools to prevent layoffs over enrollment declines, and North Carolina lawmakers decided to allow schools to use pre-pandemic attendance levels.

Some districts have struggled to explain the need for cuts. Albuquerque Public Schools announced this spring that it anticipates a budget shortfall of about $25 million. In California, which announced this month that enrollment had fallen by an additional 110,283 students, Oakland's planned school closures are leading to protests. The ACLU filed a complaint this month alleging that they disproportionately affect Black students and families.In Minneapolis Public Schools, where a nearly three-week long teacher strike ended with a new contract, the district said it needed to make $27.1 million in budget cuts in the upcoming school year to pay for it.

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