Mental health, CTE, security and SEL: These subjects frequently appear in discussions at school board meetings in districts across the country, especially post-pandemic. Now, you can add STEM to the list.
A national keyword search conducted by K12 data tracker Burbio suggests growing momentum behind STEM-related initiatives at school board meetings as we head into summer. In this month’s dataset, Burbio highlights five states/regions where STEM-centered conversations have been most prominent in their discussions. The share of districts that have mentioned STEM (or STEAM) at least once include:
- Florida (46.3%)
- California (43.5%)
- New England (42.7%)
- Southern states [AL, MS, NC, TN and SC] (27.5%)
- Texas (13.3%)
Discussions at school board meetings in these locations have also spent significant amounts of time discussing special education:
- New England (84.6%)
- California (82.7%)
- Southern states (38.6%)
- Texas (36.3%)
- Florida (19.5%)
More from DA: This California leader is using AI to expand his reach—and become multilingual
What about K12 grants?
Shifting away from school board discussions, Burbio gathered data that reflects the scope of state-specific funding for K12 schools. Below, you’ll find a chart summarizing 10 of the most common categories of grants, the total number of grants in each category and the market size for the categories listed.
Note: The data represents grants that were available during the 2023-24 school year and several that have been announced for 2024-25.
| Professional development | Grant count: 296 | Projected total: $9,779,034,876 |
| Instruction | Grant count: 198 | Projected total: $5,151,119,815 |
| Student services/Admin | Grant count: 195 | Projected total: $3,290,052,360 |
| Mental health/At risk | Grant count: 173 | Projected total: $2,810,124,573 |
| Healthy Kids | Grant count: 148 | Projected total: $1,491,519,254 |
| Curriculum – Core | Grant count: 145 | Projected total: $2,954,034,338 |
| CTE | Grant count: 139 | Projected total: $4,168,720,202 |
| Curriculum – Non-core | Grant count: 129 | Projected total: $12,418,805,932 |
| Curriculum – STEM | Grant count: 116 | Projected total: $407,154,089 |
| Equipment – Other | Grant count: 113 | Projected total: $6,061,200,537 |
