Tense conflict over issues like how districts teach about race, their policies related to LGBTQ+ students, and the books they keep in school libraries cost American schools more than $3 billion last academic year, according to a new analysis that aimed for the first time to put a dollar figure on the fallout from the culture war clashes of recent years.
But not all schools fared equally.
Some saw minor, sporadic interruptions at school board meetings and community events, while others felt the impact in nearly every aspect of their operations. They had to cover the costs of increased security at board meetings and district offices; compensation for the additional staff needed to handle communications with media outlets and on social media, primarily to combat misinformation; legal fees; expenses related to staff turnover; and staff time spent responding to an influx of public-records requests.
A small number of school district leaders who participated in the survey this past summer, about 2 percent, reported no disruptions at all.
The analysis, from four researchers who teamed up to put a number to the cost of conflicts districts have dealt with increasingly in recent years, draws on a nationally representative survey of 467 superintendents from 46 states. The researchers were John Rogers of the University of California, Los Angeles, Rachel White of the University of Texas at Austin, Robert Shand of American University, and Joseph Kahne of the University of California, Riverside.
The superintendents were asked if their districts experienced conflict related to culturally divisive issues; the frequency of threats to district staff and the threats’ subject matter; and the financial and human resources costs related to such conflicts.
Based on their responses, each district’s level of conflict was rated “low,” “moderate,” or “high.”
To facilitate comparisons among districts of varying sizes 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.
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.
Districts with high conflict scores reported costs of about $800,000, on average, or about $80 per student. Moderate-conflict districts’ average costs totaled $485,000 ($50 per student), and low-conflict districts averaged about $250,000 ($25 per student), the report says.
In total, those costs—weighted to reflect overall public school enrollment in the United States—totaled approximately $3.2 billion for schools. (By comparison, public schools spent about $837 billion total in the 2020-21 school year, the most recent one for which federal data are available.)
Regardless of the level of conflict the districts reported, legal expenses made up a major share of direct expenses, usually related to lawsuits and to help districts fulfill an influx of public-records requests. Legal costs represented the largest expense category for moderate- and high-conflict districts and the second largest expense category, after security, for low-conflict districts. Other top, conflict-related expense categories included the cost of time spent responding to media inquiries, managing social media accounts, and handling community relations.
Many of the costs associated with the culturally divisive conflict could be attributed to related staff turnover, according to the superintendents who participated in the survey. Superintendents in high-conflict districts reported about $460,000 in costs related to staff turnover, compared with about $214,000 in moderate-conflict districts and $148,000 in low-conflict districts. The superintendent of a high-conflict district attributed the elevated staff turnover in part to “incredible stress on leaders and teachers as they navigate imaginary slights and online drama in the community.”
The impact of the conflicts went beyond budget lines, too, affecting staff members’ mental health and stress levels. In turn, superintendents reported higher absenteeism rates in high-conflict districts.
Ninety-four percent of superintendents in high-conflict districts said the conflicts had a negative impact on staff stress and mental health, compared with 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.
One superintendent told the researchers about a situation in her district in which a student shared messages during class that many viewed as homophobic. The student refused the principal’s request to express their ideas in a different way and spoke out publicly—with help from his parents and a conservative legal advocacy group—accusing the school of curtailing his freedom of expression.
The student’s story went viral on social media, then in national conservative media. Politicians from other states tweeted about the case, and the fallout reverberated in the district—exacting a toll on staff.
“Our social media accounts were effectively bombed … full of messages of hate. My 60-plus-year-old administrative assistant was bombarded with phone calls to the point where she wanted to quit,” the superintendent told the researchers. “She was crying because of the things that people would call and say into the telephone—none of whom were local.”
