Nearly all of the 1,300-plus school meal program directors who responded to a School Nutrition Association survey report said they were grappling with increasing costs, with a large majority calling it “a significant challenge.” Many of these directors said they were worried they would not be able to procure foods that would meet stricter school nutrition guidelines expected to be released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in April.

“Inadequate funds and overly restrictive rules will soon cripple school meal programs,” said Chris Derico, president of the School Nutrition Association. “We believe all students deserve equal access to nutritious meals at school, and in schools that must charge for meals, we see inequities for children as well as unpaid meal debt increasing financial losses.”

Read more from DA: Where is teacher confidence headed? New surveys provide insight 

The association is now urging Congress to increase school meal funding and preserve current nutrition standards.

School nutrition supply chain snags

Fewer than one in five of the nutrition directors surveyed said current reimbursement rates cover the costs of producing a school lunch. This funding gap also makes it harder for district nutrition programs to pay competitive wages in today’s tight labor market, which in turn hinders efforts to provide healthier meals by cooking dishes from scratch.

Another top challenge identified by a large majority of school nutrition leaders was a shortage of menu items that will likely get worse if new nutritional standards are implemented. Districts with the highest numbers of students eligible for free-and-reduced eligibility are also the most likely to report severe procurement difficulties.

“With a lack of any nutrition mandates for dining or retail foods, limited demand for low-sodium and whole-grain products in the retail market leaves many manufacturers and distributors hesitant to prepare and stock specialty items for K12 customers,” the report asserts.

Unpaid meal debt continues to be a financial hurdle in districts that can no longer serve universal free meals. The shift back to paid meals since the pandemic has led to consistent drops in student participation, in part because some families fail to submit applications.

On the other hand, schools that provide free meals to all students also report a more positive social-emotional cafeteria environment, reduced stigma for low-income students and increased operational efficiencies, the report contends.

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Dozens of school districts, bus companies and other entities will use their share of the EPA’s first Clean School Bus Program Grants to purchase 2,700 low- and zero-emission buses. About 280 school districts serving over 7 million students across 37 states will benefit from the initiative, which is part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure & Jobs Law, the EPA announced this week.

“We’re once again accelerating the transition to electric and low-emission school buses in America, helping to secure a healthier future where all our children can breathe cleaner air,” EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan said in a statement. “I’ve sat next to students on their very first clean school bus ride and their excitement reflects the power of good policy.”

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Among the biggest award winners are Boston Public Schools, Chicago Public Schools, the Dekalb County School District, Los Angeles USD and Miami-Dade County Public Schools, which each received about $20 million to upgrade their bus fleets.

Asthma and other conditions exacerbated by diesel bus emissions cause students to miss school, a problem that disproportionately affects communities of color and Tribal communities, the EPA says. The agency initially made $400 million in grants available but doubled the amount because of districts’ heavy demand for electric and low-emission vehicles.

In 2022, the EPA awarded schools over $875 million in Clean School Bus Program rebates, which allowed 372 school districts to replace 2,366 vehicles. The agency is accepting applications for the 2023 clean bus rebate program until Jan. 31.

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The only restrictions are requirements on district size, demonstrated need, and the involvement of community partners, among other conditions, according to the school data tracking firm Burbio, which compiled the list. If you’re not teaching and learning in one of the following eight locations, know that your state may have similar programs:

• Small School District Modernization Grant: Available to Washington districts with fewer than 1,000 students or less and where property values are so low that replacing or modernizing school facilities with the state’s construction assistance program would be excessively burdensome on local property owners or would exceed district debt limits.
• Robotics Education Development Grants: New Hampshire districts that are partnering with a sponsor or business can request up to $15,000 to launch a robotics team.
• District-Wide Early Education Grant program: $3 million will be distributed to Alaska districts to create or expand pre-K programs. Low-performing districts and those not served by Head Start will be prioritized.
• Bipartisan Safer Communities Act: South Dakota districts with high absenteeism rates, a chronic absenteeism rate that has doubled since the pandemic, or attendance below 85% can seek up to $500,000 from this sub-grant.
• Supplemental Equipment Grants: Pennsylvania secondary schools and career and technical centers with established CTE programs are eligible to share $15 million to purchase classroom equipment.
• Olmstead Family and Community Engagement grants: Nonprofits serving students with disabilities in “historically underserved racial/ethnic communities or racial/ethnic communities” in Minnesota can partner with school districts on grants of up to $10,000.
• Specialized Secondary Programs Grant: California districts received $4.9 million to conduct in-depth studies of a core curriculum area that promotes technology skills.
• Hate Crime Prevention Round 2 Grant: Massachusetts districts that have experienced bias, that are chronically underperforming or that have partnered with a civil rights organization will be first in line for this funding, which requires a letter of support from the head of a local law enforcement agency.

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“We had this hypothesis that we needed to do something different with our sixth graders,” says Smith, whose building is part of Orchard View Schools in Muskegon. “We wanted to tackle … how we can connect with our sixth graders in a way that better engages them in school and community. How do we engage them so that they’re having an authentic experience and they’re enjoying their learning?”

Orchard View Middle partnered with the Human Restoration Project, a child development nonprofit, to conduct focus groups in which students were asked what would make them feel a stronger sense of belonging at school and how they could get the most out of their learning. The program that emerged paired a cohort of sixth graders with a team of four teachers who now provide interdisciplinary projected-based learning.

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To be able to kick the program off at the beginning of this school year, Smith sought teachers who were excited about the experiment and, with more help from the Human Restoration Project, provided professional development and time to plan the curriculum over the summer of 2023.

Smith and his team have secured a five-year, $4-million federal EIR grant, which will also University of Virginia researchers to track how the school assesses progress based on student  portfolios, which the school is calling “learning journeys.” The grant will fund field trips and provide each cohort with $12,500 for supplies.

“The biggest challenge for PBL is the cost,” Smith adds. “We want these to be authentic experiences. We want the kids rolling their sleeves up and working together and bring ‘courageous collaborators.'”

Cooking with core subjects

Each project students work on will combine the four core subjects: English language arts, math, science and social studies. The first project, which students completed this fall, focused on healthy living and eating and included field trips to urban farms and a culinary arts program at nearby Baker College. The students created healthy eating infomercials and posters to spread the word about their learning and spent plenty of time in the kitchen.

“While they’re cooking, they’re doing the math and their science and their ELA,” Smith notes. “They’re doing all of the subjects while they’re exploring and they have their learning journey at the very end.”

An upcoming group project will task students with designing a school kitchen with a $125,000 grant from Orchard View’s food service provider. Among the already visible outcomes of the school-within-a-school is an improving learning environment in a county that grapples with chronic absenteeism due to a large transient population, Smith attests.

Sixth-grader teachers have also made fewer office referrals for disruptive behavior this school year. “We’re seeing higher engagement and less discipline,” he says. “We’re going to focus on building that community and creating experiences so kids want to come to school and value coming to school,” Smith explains. “I don’t want them to feel like they’re just coming in and going through the motions.”

The PBL school-within-a-school has the full support of Orchard View Superintendent Jim Nielsen. “We’re recognizing students don’t necessarily learn all the same way and they certainly are not learning the way they did 20 or 30 years ago,” Nielsen concludes. “When you look around education, one of the biggest issues we have is we’re still doing things the way we did 20 or 30 years ago.”

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Nampa has lost 1,900 students over the last decade and that has sucked $5.5 million from its budget since the state reinstituted average daily attendance funding. Nampa’s leaders there are pushing to close a middle school and three elementary schools while relocating several other schools, including one of its high schools.

“The aging infrastructure of our facilities further complicates the fiscal outlook,” Nampa’s leaders added. “Many of our school buildings, having served generations of students, are in need of significant repairs or upgrades.

The proposals have, not surprisingly, distressed many in the community, including Hollis Babb, a teacher at one of the elementary schools that may soon be shuttered. “I’m OK with losing my job, but I’m not OK with these students losing their safe place,” Babb said at a recent school board meeting chronicled by the Idaho Press. “This is their home.”

School closures across the country

Kenosha Unified School District in Wisconsin voted Dec. 12 to close six schools—five elementaries and a middle school. The decision was eight months in the making as administrators and the school board worked to offset a $15M budget deficit looming in the 2024-25 fiscal year. The shortfall was created by a structural deficit, increased health insurance costs, the loss of ESSER funding and potential salary schedule movements.

“This was a long, difficult process that will have a major impact on our community,” Superintendent Jeff Weiss said on the district’s website. “Unfortunately, our district is currently built for 23,000 students,” School Board President Yolanda Adams added, “but is funded for fewer than 19,000, and we cannot continue to operate at that level without negatively impacting the services we provide our students.”

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Spring Branch ISD in Texas is facing a $35 million deficit in the next fiscal year and its leaders have decided to close two elementary buildings and discontinue a charter partnership. That will save about $9 million, with the remainder of the shortfall made up by central office staff reductions, the district says on its website.

“We must ensure that while finding ways to achieve operational efficiencies, we maintain excellent academic and extracurricular experiences that our students need and deserve, and our community expects,” Superintendent Jennifer Blaine affirmed. “We will not let the leaders in Austin take us down. The harder they try to destroy public education, the harder we will work to make sure our students continue to succeed at the very highest levels.”

Akron Public Schools in Ohio is in the process of “right-sizing” due to population changes, and is looking at redrawing boundaries and closing three schools, including an elementary building that’s more than 100 years old, WKYC.com reported.

“We have to achieve a balance,” Superintendent Michael Robinson, who has scheduled a series of community meetings about the closures, said on the district’s website. “For years in our city, while we were busy rebuilding our inventory and consolidating our footprint, population changes created new challenges we must meet. We must address our building capacity in the midst of a diverse yet declining population throughout our city.”

Leaders in several other districts are currently contemplating closing multiple schools:

• Arizona: A committee has recommended closing four schools in Arizona’s Paradise Valley Unified School District.
• Louisiana: The school board has voted to close three elementary schools in the Terrebonne Parish School District.
• Michigan: Tecumseh Public Schools will close two schools at the end of this school year.
• Mississippi: Jackson Public Schools has for several months been working on a plan to close more than a dozen schools.
• North Carolina: Guilford County Schools plans to close three elementary schools and a middle school.
• West Virginia: The state’s Board of Education is allowing four elementary schools to close.

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But the flood of edtech into classrooms may slow in 2024, thanks to the expiration of ESSER funding and tightening budgets. K12 leaders will be zeroing in on the products that move the needle on achievement and other priorities, says Jeremy Cowdrey, the CEO of Discovery Education.

“We are calling this movement the great rationalization and consolidation,” Cowdrey explains. “They will seek to renew products that have high usage, personalize learning, and drive deeper engagement in instruction. They will keep edtech resources that have shown a proven, measurable impact on students. ”

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Leaders will maintain relationships with edtech providers who are purpose-driven and offer multiple solutions from one consolidated platform, he adds.

Beyond that, artificial intelligence will likely continue to suck up most of the oxygen when it comes to edtech trends. “AI will impact everything—from creating relevant lesson plans to acting as a teacher’s assistant and student learning,” says Sara Gu, co-founder and COO of ClassIn, which provides blended, hybrid and remote learning platforms. “AI tools are being developed for educators and launched into the market on a weekly basis. Many of these are designed to save teachers time.”

As many AI tools are designed to save teachers’ time, Gu says she expects a comprehensive lesson-planning tool will emerge in the near future. “With the vast amount of material currently available on the internet and the number of databases that the [AIs] can pull from, a world where all teachers have to do is plug in their learning objectives and standards and get an array of choices in each of the categories—materials, activities, and assessments—can’t be that far off.”

Gu also predicts that student behavior will guide the development of AI codes of conduct and determine how the technology is used in schools. Gu sees a fine line between AI being used as a tool and being used to cheat.

“There is not yet one commonly accepted approach to integrating AI tools and technology into a school or school district’s code of conduct,” she continues. “Early policies range from extremely strict “student work submitted for academic credit and completed using AI will be considered plagiarism” to encouraging teachers to use AI tools in their classrooms.”

Teachers will increasingly use AI to assess and grade students, and these tools could save time and reduce burnout, says Sari Factor, chief strategy officer at K12 curriculum provider Imagine Learning. “Educators will have more equitable access to actionable, research-based measures of student success to better inform instruction, allowing educators to focus on providing personalized support to students,” says Factor.

Ethical school leaders will also have to ensure that principles such as transparency, accountability, fairness, and privacy are priorities when adopting AI-driven educational tools. “Leveraging AI and digital-first curriculum to develop personalized lesson plans that cater to unique student needs, for example, will allow teachers to focus on delivering impactful lessons that inspire student success,” Factor contends. “As a result, we’ll see less teacher burnout over time.

In other edtech trends, Gu expects more schools to lean on virtual and hybrid instruction to cope with teacher and staff shortages. She notes that a charter network in San Jose, California, has transferred math and science classes to Zoom where students are taught by teachers from around the country.

“We also expect hybrid solutions to gain momentum in response to student demand as schools work to balance their finite resources while offering more flexibility,” Gu predicts.

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With the expiration of ESSER III funding looming in less than a year, help is also on the horizon. The K12 data tracking organization Burbio is now building a clearinghouse of grants and other specialized state revenue streams. The firm’s says its goal is to provide details on the purposes of specific grants, award amounts, application deadlines and district eligibility requirements, among other information.

Key categories will include school security, technology, early childhood, infrastructure, CTE, professional development, SEL, mental health, arts, STEM and core curriculum.

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“While most state-level funding comes through education departments, there are examples of funding available from other departments and agencies that school districts also can tap into,” the company notes. “It is difficult to overstate the variety of funding sources across every state, so there is no such thing as a representative list.”

Here are a few examples of state education funding streams that Burbio has identified in a handful of K12 categories, from safety to curriculum to HVAC upgrades:

• STEM: Iowa is offering up to $40,000 in matching grants to districts that launch or expand work-based learning opportunities that allow students to develop future-focused, high-demand STEM skills.
• Core curriculum: The $1.2 million Genocide Education grants program supports Massachusetts districts in developing or purchasing curriculum materials, professional development programs and other resources to teach high school students about the history and patterns of genocide.
• Technology: Washington’s Digital Equity & Inclusion Grants support 1-to-1 device programs, inclusionary and adaptive technology, classroom audio enhancement, devices for special education students and edtech designed for multi-language learners.
• Pre-K: New Jersey awarded $51.9 million from the state’s share of federal grant funding to 23 school districts to create, expand and renovate preschool facilities.
• Infrastructure: The state lottery-funded Needs-Based Public School Capital Fund will give $254 million in construction grants to lower-income school districts in North Carolina.
• Safety and security: The SAFE Grant program provides $800 million to districts in Texas.
• CTE: Pathways in Technology Early College High School, or P-TECH, will award $31.5 million over the next seven years to district partnerships that prepare New York students for high-skilled technology and manufacturing jobs.
• HVAC: Connecticut’s newly established “HVAC Indoor Air Quality Grants Program for Public Schools” offers $150 million from state and American Rescue Plan funds for heating, ventilation and air conditioning system upgrades.

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At the same time, solutions are emerging and evolving as K12 leaders work to reverse the trend and eliminate the school-to-prison pipeline.

“We cannot be complacent when the data repeatedly tells us that the race, sex, or disability of students continue to dramatically impact everything from access to advanced placement courses to the availability of school counselors to the use of exclusionary and traumatic disciplinary practices,” U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a recent statement.

Disciplinary disparities

Black boys are more than twice as likely to be suspended than their white male classmates, according to a November report from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.

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Overall, about 638,700 students were suspended (out-of-school) at least once and about 28,300 were expelled in the most recent year for which national data was available, 2020-21. Black students, among other groups, are also overrepresented when it comes to arrests and law enforcement referrals:

• Black students represented 15% of K12 enrollment, but 18% of students referred to law enforcement and 22% of students subjected to a school-related arrest.
• White students represented 46% of enrollment, but 55% of students referred to law enforcement and 47% of students subjected to a school-related arrest.
• Students with disabilities represented 17% of enrollment, but 27% of students referred to law enforcement and 28% of students subjected to a school-related arrest. They also accounted for 29% of students who were suspended at least once of 21% of those who were expelled.
• Boys, Black students, students of two or more races, and students with disabilities were subjected to restraints and seclusion at disproportionate rates.

Districts reported approximately 274,700 school offenses in 2020-21, the large majority of which were “threats of physical attack without a weapon.” About 180 schools (less than 1%) reported at least one school shooting and about 100 schools reported a homicide of a student or staff member, the Department of Education reported.

‘Peace-Building Circles’

New solutions are emerging and other practices are being refined right alongside the troubling numbers. In November, a leading civil rights group took aim at dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline. Learning for Justice, an initiative of the Southern Poverty Law Center, released several resources for school leaders who want to reform disciplinary practices in their districts.

“Educators and families can advocate for and implement practices that prioritize mental health and well-being and do not push children out of the classroom,” says the nonprofit, which shared the following ideas and articles:

1. A community “Freedom School” model embraces transformative practices to strengthen relationships.
2. A tool kit for using peace-building circles.
3. “Decarceration” gives educators a key role in ending discipline that criminalizes youth with trauma-informed practices and other reforms.
4. “It Was Always About Control“: Why class management that’s based on compliance is at the root of discipline that harms young people.
5. School safety without police is an effort to advocate for students’ dignity.
6. How leaders can work with parent-led grassroots organizations that want to end punitive school discipline policies.
7. From slavery to school discipline: Examining the connection between school discipline and the history of slavery can help schools affirm and protect Black students.
8. A webinar on trauma-responsive education.

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“This process resembles, to a degree, how education administrators and researchers consider school performance,” U.S. News said in revealing its rankings for 2024.

But the rankings—which are based on 2020-2021 assessment results—also give weight to the scores unadjusted for demographics because “parents value environments where most children arrive prepared to learn and teachers can provide a culture of enrichment,” U.S. News stated.

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“Certainly, nonacademic factors also matter in evaluating schools, but in this space we are measuring what can be fairly measured, and the academic performance of their children’s schools is generally of high importance to families,” the publication added.

Some 45,236 elementary schools and 22,053 middle schools were ranked, representing about 77% of public schools with elementary and middle school grades. But unlike its college and high school rankings, U.S. News did not produce a single master list of the top elementary and middle schools in the U.S. Rather, it compares schools only within each state.

• Here are the state-by-state rankings of best elementary schools.
• Here are the state-by-state rankings of best middle schools.

U.S. News notes that it could not update its data for California, Delaware, the District of Columbia, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington, and the rankings reflect 2018-2019 assessment data.

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“ESSER exposure” is the term researchers at Burbio use to measure the percentage of ESSER III funding in an individual district’s spending plan. That should give administrators an idea of the hole the fiscal cliff will make in district budgets around the country.

Understanding ESSER exposure

Now we are going to throw a bunch of Burbio’s numbers at you. The new analysis covers about 2,500 districts representing over 90% of K12 students and the company estimates districts will spend 40% of all ESSER III funding in the 2023-24 school year.

A little more than 60% of districts are looking at an ESSER exposure level of less than 5% while about 8% of school systems are facing shortfalls of more than 10%. At the top of Burbio’s scale, a slim 0.1% of districts face exposure of 23%—nearly a quarter of their budgets.

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The analysis also gauges the number of students affected, finding that just under half (48%) of K12 students attend districts with ESSER exposure of 5% or higher. “While many large districts have a high percentage of students who qualify as economically disadvantaged and thus a higher ESSER III allocation and more ESSER exposure, so do many low-enrollment rural districts and low-enrollment urban charter districts,” the researchers concluded.

A few state breakdowns

Burbio also drilled down to ESSER exposure levels among districts in a handful of states. Here’s what researchers found:

• New Jersey: 93% of districts have ESSER III exposure of less than 5%; 6.6% of districts have exposure of over 5%.
• Pennsylvania: 62% of districts have exposure of 5% or less; 23% have exposure of 5% to 10%; just over 11% have exposure of 10 to 15%, and 3.1% have exposure of over 15%.
• Texas: 42% of districts have exposure of 5% or less; 42% have exposure of 5% to 10%; just over 11% have exposure of 10 to 15%, and 2.5% have exposure of over 15%.

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