Why are School Boards Closing Our Schools?
By Laura Petty, Staff Attorney July 8, 2026
By Laura Petty, Staff Attorney July 8, 2026
We are in a national school closures crisis. In recent years, school boards around the country have been approving mass school closure plans. Often, the schools slated for closure disproportionately serve Black and Latine students and communities, forcing those families and neighborhoods to lose equal access to public education. While this crisis is fueled by profit-motivated billionaires, it would not be possible without the complicity of local policymakers. School boards, squeezed by increased cuts to their budgets, face political pressure that convinces them to believe false narratives about needing to act quickly to close schools.
Advancement Project works every day to support organizers and communities fighting to make their schools safe and welcoming for all students. We believe schools should be abundant, joyful spaces where all young people can learn and thrive. In the face of the agenda to control, corporatize, police, and close schools in Black and Latine communities, we are using our resources and legal tools to support campaigns to fight back.
For example, the Columbus Education Justice Coalition (CEJC) and the Ohio Organizing Collaborative (OOC) have been organizing communities in Columbus, Ohio to fight for well-resourced community schools and save their schools from closure. For too long, Black communities on Columbus’s South Side have been systemically denied equal access to quality education in their communities and instead have been forced to endure harmful repeated rounds of school closures. These closures further deprived Black communities of equal access to education and brought about profits for charter school operators and real estate developers, limiting access to public education and pushing Black families out of their neighborhoods. In Ohio, charter schools are legally given priority to purchase public school buildings that are up for sale and developers usually buy up the buildings that charter schools don’t want for higher-income housing.
Columbus is the fastest growing city in the United States. Its City Council recently passed a new housing plan to create hundreds of thousands of new homes in the city, and public school enrollment has grown for two consecutive years. Yet the school board and district are fixated on closing schools, particularly in Black communities.
To help combat this trend, Advancement Project created a resource for school board members and organizers called “Changing the Narrative: How School Board Members Can Combat Misinformation and Champion Local Public Schools.” Our goal is to dispel many of the unfounded and all-too-common narratives that school boards and highly paid consultants use to justify shuttering schools in Black and Latine communities.
Grassroots organizations like CEJC and OOC have countered these harmful narratives with people-powered campaigns. Throughout 2023 and 2024, families and community members held cookouts outside school board meetings and packed the meetings to make their opposition known. CEJC and OOC invited school board members to tour the schools slated for closure and meet students, staff and families—for many board members, this was the first time they had entered the school they were considering to close. And in 2024, Columbus won a partial victory, cutting the number of schools slated for closure from 20 to 5.
In 2025, after some members of the Columbus City School Board made public statements about closing schools, organizers at CEJC and OOC asked Advancement Project for support crafting a new school board policy that would require any decision to close schools to be fiscally responsible, not discriminatory, and made with community input.
We developed a new policy for the Columbus City School Board, one that would protect the community from harmful school closures and would ensure that the Board prioritizes growth and sustainability for the whole district.
CEJC created a petition in support of the policy and continues to advocate for its passage. You can support their efforts by signing on!
Advancement Project recently adapted the policy we developed with CEJC and OOC into a model policy for other school districts across the country. If you want your school board to prioritize equal access to education and sustainability for the future over reckless and harmful school closures that only benefit wealthy interests, tell your school board to adapt and pass this policy!