These are the reasons why public schools are closing in the U.S.

There has been a worrying trend for parents with children in public school districts around the country in recent years, more and morepublic schools are closing.

While voucher programs have given parents the option to send their kids to charter and private schools creating competition for students, there are other factors that are believed to be driving public school closures. Specifically, lower birth rates in the United States and the housing market.

Public school death spiral

Just losing five or ten students can start a death spiral for a public school explained Erica Meltzer to NPR’s The Indicator. That’s because their state and federal funding is based partly on per-pupil enrollment.

And if each student represents roughly $10,000 in funding for a school that can mean the school has to cut some position or program at the school. The national editor at Chalkbeat, a nonprofit news organization that covers education, explained that this in turn may lead to more families withdrawing their kids from school leading to a death spiral.

While schools have been facing funding issues for years now, it has come to the forefront recently as special covid funding is running out and public schools have to contend with situation.

How the birth rate and housing are helping

Vice President of Planning Services for a company called HPM, a construction management service that provides services to K-12 education among other industries, Tracy Richter told The Indicator that one of the biggest reasons for a drop in student enrollment is that there are fewer children to teach. Since the start of the Great Recession in 2007, the US birth rate is down by 20%.

Another big driver is the housing market. On the one hand there is a dearth of affordable housing options in large metro areas across the country which is keeping young families away.

On the other, older people whose children are no longer of school age are not moving out of their homes to downsize. These people would normally move out and younger families with school-age children would move in.

This is the result of them feeling that they are ‘locked in’ to their mortgages. This is because they have an ultra-low interest rate and are not willing to spend more for less.

Richter explained that these people are thinking they will get “half the house at twice the mortgage and four times the interest rate,” which he says just “isn’t very attractive.”

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