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Block 931,208
TL:DR

Elementary classroom in Alaska, 2007 Image credit: Liz via Wikimedia

The 21st Century School Fund, the International WELL Building Institute (WBI) and the National Council on School Facilities has released their 2025 State of Our Schools report, which reveals a $90 billion funding shortfall for United States school facility construction, maintenance and modernization.

The three organizations' 2016 report had the gap at $46 billion and then $85 billion in 2021. This, the groups said, is despite local school districts increasing their investments in school infrastructure. The reason for the shortfall is rising construction costs, more buildings and older facilities that need more maintenance, upgrades or replacement.

"Even as local districts have stepped up by increasing their annual spending on school facilities from $95 billion in 2016 to more than $150 billion now, they are still falling behind," said Mary Filardo, executive director, 21st Century School Fund and lead author of the report.

"As the funding gap for our critical school infrastructure grows, it becomes even harder to climb out of this hole unless we begin to better share the load across levels of government and embrace a dynamic solution set that ensures every public dollar delivers a stronger return on investment," Filardo said.

And even though PK-12 schools in the U.S. represent the second largest category of public infrastructure behind highways, the report said, funding for school projects are mostly left to local governments. This in stark contrast to the transportation sector, which enjoys significant state and federal financing.

As a result of having to shoulder this burden, according to the report, school districts are also taking on a great deal of debt. As of the end of fiscal year 2023, local districts were more than one-half trillion dollars in long-term debt and had paid $22 billion in interest.

The report's recommendations for addressing this funding gap include:

Establishing a federal incentive funding program of $25 billion per year, which would reduce annual requirements by $75 billion, a 34% return on investment;
Increasing federal support for state capacity grants for facility data, planning, technical assistance and training so that all states are ready to carry out modernization work;
Increase the level of shared investment across all levels of government; and
Build the capacity necessary to deliver improvements.
"Without greater responsibility across all levels of government, particularly the federal government, our country will continue to underfund the very infrastructure that determines the health, safety and educational outcomes of millions of children," said Rachel Hodgdon, president and CEO, International WELL Building Institute.

"Where our children learn matters, and access to safe, healthy and modern learning environments should be a right, not a privilege," Hodgdon said.

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Sheesh local school municipalities are $500B in debt and paying $22B in interest is absolute madness while the Feds gives all this money to foreign entities.

Also I didn’t know schools were the second largest public infrastructure behind highways

This is what I hope bitcoin fixes. It is hard to get out from the debt trap.