A national survey of 467 superintendents conducted over summer 2024 considered the societal and fiscal costs of recent conflicts happening in schools and found that two-thirds of respondents, who represent 46 states, have experienced moderate to high rates of culturally divisive clashes in their local educational agencies since the pandemic.
Published by researchers from University of California, Los Angeles, UC Riverside, University of Texas at Austin and American University, The Costs of Conflict: The Fiscal Impact of Culturally Divisive Conflict on Public Schools in the United States notes that the discord takes attention and resources away from serving students and other priority areas.
In the 2023–24 academic year, researchers estimate public schools spent $3.2 billion to respond to these conflicts.
“Beginning in the 2020–21 school year, conflict directed at schools and districts and taking place during school board meetings became a national phenomenon. Speakers used common talking points, often not based in fact, expressing concerns about responses to COVID-19, teaching about race and racism, and policies and practices related to LGBTQ youth,” states the report, which summarizes the survey’s findings. Political mobilization has been on the uptick since — leading to new legislation that restricts and/or protects the rights of students and what they learn.
“The headlines detailing conflicts in school board meetings that were so prevalent in 2021 may be less common today, but this conflict has not disappeared. 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 report continues.
Costs incurred by LEAs are associated with things like increasing security, needing additional staff for communications efforts, legal expenses, time spent responding to Freedom of Information Act requests, staff turnover and more.
“Across rural, suburban, and urban areas and in communities of all political persuasions, we heard that these costs could be sizable, and that they were meaningfully impacting the quality of education students received,” according to the report.
In 2023–24, 38 percent of those surveyed experienced moderate levels of culturally divisive conflict in their LEAs and 27.5 percent dealt with high rates where conflict happened regularly across multiple subjects and was often paired with violent rhetoric and/or threats.
On average, researchers estimate that high conflict LEAs with 10,000 students spend $811,805 annually to address associated direct, indirect and turnover costs, followed by $485,065 for those moderately affected and $249,765 for low-conflict school systems.
Fifty percent of superintendents said they had been harassed at least once during the most recent school year. In addition to personal harassment, many LEAs are spending time and money addressing disinformation and baseless allegations.
These instances have led to an increase in turnover among leadership and teachers/staff, and in some cases led to negative mental health outcomes, decreased morale and driven staff away, superintendents report.
“Many superintendents we spoke with told us that it is vital for educational leaders and for the broader public to work to diminish the opportunities for conflict entrepreneurs to disrupt and distract and gain power — in school board meetings and elsewhere,” the report concludes. “Such efforts would not prevent evidence-based or value-based disagreements regarding school policies. Disagreement is appropriate and to be expected in diverse democracies. But rejecting this small number of conflict entrepreneurs would help ensure that community members communicate their disagreements in a manner consistent with democratic principles. This means upholding norms of respect, evidence based reasoning, and civil deliberation that embraces the well-being and dignity of all.”
