The deferred maintenance crisis in many U.S. school districts is tough and getting tougher. Districts now face a $90 billion shortfall in facility funding every year, despite significant progress local school districts have made to ramp up their investments.
The grim news comes from the 2025 State of Our Schools report recently released by the 21st Century School Fund, International WELL Building Institute and the National Council on School Facilities.
The 2025 report looks at the period that included the COVID-19 pandemic. It shows continued increases in the nation’s annual funding gap for elementary and secondary public school buildings and grounds is projected to be nearly $90 billion. Since previous studies in 2016 and 2021, the report has tracked a steep and alarming rise in the nation’s school facilities funding deficit. A $46 billion gap in 2016 grew to $85 billion in 2021 and has continued to widen as school construction costs climb, building inventories expand and aging facilities require more extensive maintenance, modernization or replacement.
Unlike transportation infrastructure, where federal and state governments shoulder most of the costs, school facilities are primarily left to local districts. The report finds that local districts bear 80 percent of school facility funding, with states contributing 17 percent and the federal government just 3 percent.
Some progress has been made. Actual maintenance and operations spending, school construction and equipment capital outlay investment averaged $152 billion each year from fiscal years 2014 to 2023. Facility spending and investments have begun to address long-standing deteriorated building conditions laid bare by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dan Hounsell is senior editor for the facilities market. He has more than 30 years of experience writing about facilities maintenance, engineering and management.?
