With rising costs and shrinking tax bases, education leaders in New York are trying to find solutions.
They are called "low-wealth, high-needs" districts and there may be 300 of them just in the state's rural areas.
That's around 40 percent of the state's school districts.
State regents are looking at ways to deal with some of the problems, perhaps more regional high schools to offer better programs while easing the fiscal pressure on individual districts.
There's also talk of easing restrictions on merging districts so there will be more mergers.
State Education Commissioner John King says it's a statewide problem.
"The growing risk that we will have districts around the state that are not only fiscally insolvent but educationally insolvent. That is districts that will not be able to provide the quality education to students, that won't be able to provide art, music, elective courses, foreign languages, APs the things we would want for our kids," King said.
"We're very concerned about that."
There is also discussion of Civil Rights lawsuits to force more state money into financially poor districts.
