School districts have increasingly found themselves at the center of tense conflict in recent years. And those conflicts come at a cost.
These clashes—over issues like how districts are addressing race and policies related to LGBTQ+ students’ rights—cost American schools more than $3 billion in the 2023-24 academic year, according to a new analysis.
The costs were both direct and indirect. They included the price of increased security at board meetings and district offices; compensation for the additional staff needed to handle communications, primarily to combat misinformation; legal fees; expenses related to staff turnover; and expenditures to cover the staff time spent responding to an influx of public-records requests.
“The expenditures were far more common than I would have expected,” said John Rogers, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles school of education and information studies. “In addition to the total dollar figures, this speaks to the stress of culturally divisive conflict on a school system that’s constantly having to respond in ways that are diminishing its impact and focus on education and efforts to support young people’s well-being.”
The study, released Wednesday, is the first effort to quantify the financial toll of increased conflict in schools after years of disruptions to schools’ day-to-day operations and at board meetings and community events.
The analysis, from four researchers who teamed up to put a number to the cost of conflicts districts have dealt with in recent years, draws on a nationally representative survey of 467 superintendents from 46 states conducted in the summer of 2024. The superintendents were asked if their districts experienced conflict related to culturally divisive issues; the frequency of threats made to district staff and what they were about; and the financial and human resources costs related to such conflicts.
Nearly all respondents reported some sort of culturally divisive conflict during the 2023-24 school year, and two-thirds of superintendents reported that their districts experienced “moderate” or “high” levels of conflict, meaning it was a regular occurrence. In addition to experiencing conflict routinely, the districts with “high” levels of conflict experienced disruptions that were often accompanied by “violent rhetoric or threats,” according to the report. About 2.5 percent of respondents reported no divisive conflicts during the 2023-24 school year.
In open-ended responses to the survey, several superintendents noted that culturally divisive conflict has grown in recent years, and the three most common topics mentioned as the source of conflict were instruction about race and racism, the rights of LGBTQ+ students, and the books students could access in the school library.
The other authors of the report were Rachel White of the University of Texas at Austin, Robert Shand of American University, and Joseph Kahne of the University of California, Riverside.
The research builds off of previous studies showing the scope of conflict directed at schools and districts had reached new heights in recent years.
One study, drawing on media reports, found that during the 2020-21 school year, at least 894 school districts enrolling about 35 percent of all K–12 students in the United States were the targets of local “anti-critical race theory” efforts that claimed schools were discriminating against white people.
More recently, media coverage of such high-profile conflicts has died down, but “this conflict has not disappeared,” the new report says.
“Although they may be attracting less attention from the press, the pressures of culturally divisive conflict have remained intense. And, the threats of culturally divisive conflict continue to impact schools.”
The largest share of costs are related to security, legal expenses
To facilitate comparisons between districts with different levels of conflict, the authors weighted the results so the costs would be representative of those incurred by a district with 10,000 students.
Districts of that size with high conflict scores reported costs of about $800,000, on average. Moderate-conflict districts’ average costs totaled $485,000, and low-conflict districts averaged about $250,000, according to the report.
Put another way, high-conflict districts spent about $80 per student on expenses related to divisive conflicts, while moderate-conflict districts spent about $50 per student and low-conflict districts spent about $25 per student.
In total, those costs—weighted to reflect overall public school enrollment in the United States—totaled approximately $3.2 billion. (For context, public schools spent about $837 billion total in the 2020-21 school year, the most recent one for which federal data are available.)
For districts with all levels of conflict, legal expenses—often related to lawsuits and to help districts fulfill public records requests—comprised the largest category of costs, followed by security and media expenses.
The report acknowledged that “some degree of political conflict is inevitable” and estimated the potential cost savings would be around $2 billion if districts with high and moderate levels of conflict could reduce the level of conflict.
With that sum “it would be possible to expand the national [School Breakfast Program] budget by 40 percent, ensuring that schools across the country could provide quality and nutritious meals for all students in need,” the report says. “Or, such funds could be used to hire an additional counselor or psychologist for every public high school in the United States.”
Conflict weighs on staff mental health and leads to higher staff absenteeism
In addition to staff turnover, heightened levels of conflict had a direct impact on staff members’ stress, mental health, and absenteeism, according to the survey.
Nearly all superintendents in high-conflict districts, 94 percent, said the conflicts had a negative impact on staff stress and mental health, compared to 72 percent of superintendents in moderate-conflict districts and 27 percent in low-conflict districts. About 70 percent of respondents in high-conflict districts reported that such conflicts led to higher absenteeism, compared with just 12 percent of respondents in low-conflict districts.
The conflicts also took a toll on district leaders, with half of superintendents who responded to the survey reporting they experienced at least one instance of harassment in the 2023-24 school year. Ten percent received at least one threat of violence, and 11 percent reported that school property had been vandalized.
“It is enormously troubling,” Rogers said. “That creates an environment in which educators don’t feel supported by their broader communities and begin wondering how long they’re going to stay in the profession. ... That’s the sort of erosion of commitment to the profession that is deeply troubling, and that we can say has a much longer-term impact than any one fiscal year.”
