US school closures accelerate amid financial strain
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The gist
US schools closed 1,156 campuses last academic year, the most since the pandemic.
Districts like Vallejo cut staff and schools, but savings rarely materialize.
Background
The figures come from an analysis by AP, The Hechinger Report and Big Local News at Stanford University. Lower birth rates are the main driver of falling enrollment, with a federal immigration crackdown and the post-pandemic spread of private school vouchers and homeschooling adding to the decline. Vallejo City Unified School District, a California district still recovering from a naval base closure in the 1990s, has closed five of its schools since 2025 and put up to a third of staff positions on the chopping block to help close a $36 million deficit. Districts including Cleveland, Houston and Philadelphia face similar closures.
How it unfolded
- 2025Vallejo City Unified School District leaders began closing campuses; five schools have closed since 2025, a quarter of the district's schools.
- Aug 17, 2026First day of school at Glen Cove Elementary in Vallejo, where students adjusted to new schools after the closures.
- Aug 18, 2026Photos showed the empty Pennycook Elementary School in Vallejo and a transitional kindergarten goodbye at Vallejo Charter School.
- Nov 9, 2026AP, The Hechinger Report and Big Local News at Stanford reported that 1,156 schools closed during the last academic year, the highest number since the pandemic.
- Nov 9, 2026The report said public school enrollment fell by more than 1.4 million students, roughly 3%, between fall 2019 and 2024, and Vallejo's enrollment dropped from nearly 18,000 in fall 2006 to about 9,300.
Key terms
- school vouchers
- A government-funded certificate that parents can use to pay tuition at a school of their choice, including private schools.
- transitional kindergarten
- A school grade that bridges preschool and kindergarten, giving young children time to develop skills for school success.
- superintendent
- An administrator who heads a school district and to whom all school principals in that district report.
Source: Wikipedia
Who’s saying what
- Official
- Vallejo superintendent Rubén Aurelio acknowledged cuts and closures are hard for families but said they are necessary to correct for school districts and budgets designed for a different era.
- Caution
- Lydia Rainey, a research principal at the Center on Reinventing Public Education, said states are not about to open their coffers and swoop in with additional funds to save schools.
- Public
- Kimberly Núñez-Brandão, whose daughter attends Glen Cove Elementary, said families are packing up and moving away, teachers are overwhelmed with 30-plus students, and asked who is winning here.
- Expert
- Research shows closing schools rarely yields the financial relief districts hope for, as busing, severance and security for empty facilities eat up savings; Vallejo operations director Marin Trujillo Cuevas said vacant campuses are vulnerable to burglaries, forcing more spending on security.