Public schools across North Carolina are seeing enrollment declines, resulting in reductions in state funding.
As districts prepare their budgets under these financial constraints, many are making difficult decisions to close schools.
WFDD’s Amy Diaz spoke with Kris Nordstrom, an education policy analyst who studied this trend, to explore what’s driving these closures and how they impact communities.
Uwharrie Ridge Six-Twelve
The Randolph County Board of Education meeting room was packed with students, parents and staff of Uwharrie Ridge Six-Twelve last month. They came to oppose a plan to close their beloved school, which officials put forth due to declining enrollment and state funding.
The superintendent said the closure would save the district a much-needed $1.3 million. But the roughly 45 speakers who approached the podium urged the board to consider what the decision would cost:
“Research on school closure shows that students who change schools often experience academic disruption for one to two semesters, which is all that we as juniors will have left," said Maverick Auman, a student at Uwharrie Ridge.
“I know what the big schools are like, and I will not go back to that," said Lesley Hefner, a student. "For me, I will end up switching to a private school or go homeschool.”
“I hurt for the staff who have devoted decades to this school family," said teacher Tiffany Rush. "I hurt for students who need the support of a smaller school and tight-knit community for basic survival, let alone their education.”
Nearly everyone who spoke highlighted the same things. They loved their school community and small class sizes.
But Superintendent Stephen Gainey said the financial pressures the district is facing are too great to sustain a school that’s enrolled at half capacity.
“This is nothing about the teachers. This is nothing about the kids. This is nothing about the community," he said at a board meeting. "It is a wonderful place, but I don't know how we can keep operating this when we continue to get handed reduced funding from the state.”
The school board said it was a hard decision, but voted 4-3 to approve the closure.
Uwharrie Ridge Six-Twelve will join a growing list of shuttered public schools across the state next year. Like Cook Literacy Model School in Winston-Salem. And Madison, Vandalia and Washington Elementary Schools in Guilford County.
These districts, like most in the state, are facing funding reductions as a result of declining enrollment.
State policies drive declines
Education policy analyst Kris Nordstrom with the North Carolina Justice Center published a report last year all about these declines. He explains that this trend is partly due to demographic changes.
“You see, overall lower birth rates, you see migration from rural communities to urban communities," he said. "So that's a big part of the story.”
The other part has to do with state policy changes.
Legislators recently expanded the private school voucher program, also known as Opportunity Scholarships, to families of all income levels. More than 100,000 students participated this year — quadruple the number in 2022.
In Nordstrom’s report, he explains that in 53 North Carolina counties, enrollment increases in charter and private school voucher programs were greater than the decreases in traditional public school enrollment.
“If those voucher and charter students instead attended the traditional public school, those districts would have had an increase in public school enrollment," Nordstrom said. "But we have these policies and charters and vouchers, and we have a decrease.”
Randolph, Forsyth and Guilford — all of which are closing schools next year — are among the counties Nordstrom identified.
But he says closing schools doesn’t actually solve this problem. And the estimated cost-savings aren’t often realized the way districts hope, for a variety of reasons. First, he says it’s hard to find buyers for schools.
“In Chicago, they closed 50 schools in 2013, and a decade later, 25 of them were still empty, half of the schools," Nordstrom said. "And there are costs to still maintaining an empty school. You know, try to make sure that it doesn't fall completely into disrepair.”
And in the meantime, a district’s transportation costs may increase as students have to travel farther to school. In Randolph County, officials estimate current Uwharrie Ridge Six-Twelve students will need to go an extra five miles to their new placements.
Superintendent Gainey says the projected savings will come from attrition — moving Uwharrie Ridge staff into vacant positions at other schools, rather than hiring more people.
“The Assistant Principal goes to a vacant assistant principal job. We eliminate the position," Gainey said. "That's where the $1.3 million’s coming from. It costs us a lot more than $1.3 million to run a school. But there's the savings.”
But if enrollment declines persist, districts may end up in the same position of having to make cuts next year. And it’s possible that a school closure eventually contributes to the population problem it was meant to address.
Potential further harm to communities
Nordstrom says when there’s a vacant school causing blight in a neighborhood, and residents have to travel farther to their new school, home values go down. That leads to population loss, which further drives down values, and becomes a vicious cycle. And it usually happens in communities of color.
“These communities that have been sort of the victims of a lack of public investment, historically, are the ones where there's declining enrollment," Nordstrom said. "And then the school closes, and then there is sort of a further harm created on that community that's already been suffering from years of lack of adequate public investment.”
When the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Board of Education voted to close Cook Literacy Model School, several community members brought up this issue.
The city had recently demolished a low-income housing community in the neighborhood, called Cleveland Avenue Homes, displacing many Cook families. Officials are building new units in phases, but they’ll take years to fully complete.
Doreen Pollock, a retired teacher and resident in that neighborhood, spoke to the school board about it months ago.
“They take everything that we have. I moved back in the community when they revitalized that location. I have a house built there," she said. "And I hate to see that school close.”
Madelyn Hughes, a media coordinator for Cook, said the revitalization project was a “quintessential example of systems letting down the population they’re trying to serve.”
“And my plea to this district is that we do not let this closure become yet another example of that," Hughes said.
Nordstrom says schools also become more segregated as a result of closures, leaving districts to expend more resources down the line to overcome widened achievement gaps and inequities.
Alternatives to closures
In his report, he offers ideas to avoid closing schools. Like adding magnet programming, or intentionally rezoning students to under-enrolled schools. Randolph did try offering various programs at Uwharrie Ridge, but canceled them after a couple of years due to low student interest.
Nordstrom says another option is to get creative, and find different ways the building could be used to meet community needs.
“Are there other government programs that could be run out of spaces that are available within schools? Could a school be partitioned in order to, you know, safely rent out areas to other businesses?”
But he says addressing the root of the problem — declining enrollment — will require policy changes at the state level.
North Carolina spent $579 million on private school vouchers this school year. More than $7 million of that was used in Randolph County. That’s roughly five times the projected cost-savings of closing Uwharrie Ridge Six-Twelve.
Meanwhile, North Carolina ranks last in the country for its public school funding effort.
“I don't envy anyone on a school board in North Carolina because they are put in a very difficult situation on how to deploy very limited resources," Nordstrom said. "So they’re stretched thin in every county in this state."
Nordstrom says that with more state funding, a lot of the budget pressures that lead to school closures would go away.
“And would allow what families want, which are small class sizes, teachers that they know, a school that is in their community," he said.
If not, more and more districts will make the difficult decision to close schools. Those conversations have already begun.