At least near me the biggest problems facing the "urban" district compared to suburban ones is declining student populations as long time homeowners age in place and the maintenance costs of 100 year old buildings compared to 10-20 year old ones in the suburbs. Teachers tend to get paid the same or less in the city district and administration counts are higher but fairly close on a per student basis compared to the burbs.

This is before you get into the socioeconomic factors that make one student population more susceptible to starting and falling behind.

> At least near me the biggest problems facing the "urban" district compared to suburban ones is declining student populations as long time homeowners age in place and the maintenance costs of 100 year old buildings compared to 10-20 year old ones in the suburbs

The building maintenance is a red herring. I believe in my district, it's about 10% of the budget on average.

Every urban district I'm familiar with has higher per-pupil funding than ~90th percentile suburban areas. (Seattle versus suburbs, Detroit versus smaller towns)

Wouldn't a declining student population mean more money per student? And it seems like it would often (but not always) be cheaper to maintain existing buildings vs building new ones? I'm also wondering how much of the new suburban buildings are financed with debt, and the costs just haven't really caught up to them yet.