I disagree it is caused by sub-urbanization or zoning. Housing tracts are built with schools.

I would argue the primary cause is an attempt at "school optimization"; the choice to attend the "better" school over the closer school. Also, standardization of schools has decreased with the great variety of charter, private and magnet schools now, increasing the reasons to skip the local school. Personally, I think standardization is best. You could make the same argument about how people choose colleges.

At least where I live, most families are moving to new development areas to get more square footage per dollar. So the schools in the established part of town are seeing declining attendance and having to consolidate to prevent high administrative overhead. The new development areas are car-only hellscapes (neighborhoods on random parcels of land that have been bought up and developed with no forward thinking) with pickup lines as described in the article.

It's also fashionable for parents to choose a school across town for arbitrary reasons in order to signal that they care more about their children (in my opinion). We have tried advocating for the local options and the positives it has had for getting to know others in the community but most don't even consider.

I'm lucky to live in an older neighborhood with an elementary school, middle school, grocery store, and a few other shops. There are also safe ways for kids to cross from adjacent neighborhoods so there is still a lot of autonomy for the kids getting to and from school.

It's in part because every major US city has spent decades underbuilding housing (usually through zoning and permitting that makes middle-density housing implicitly or explicitly illegal), pushing everyone out into the burbs just to find homes they can afford.

It might be due to the school consolidations and schools being moved to cheaper areas.

The article does have a chart that shows distance from their school. I'm curious if there are closer schools that parents chose not to let their child attend. I have known a couple people that drive miles away to drop their kid off to private schools when they have a public school a mile away.

Nobody wants to pay for teachers. Consequently, they make bigger schools with larger classrooms.

Where I grew up, you had multiple smaller elementary and middle schools eventually feeding into a larger high school.

My high school closed down because there weren’t enough families who could afford to live in the neighborhood.

zoning and economies of scale in building out larger schools overall which from a bigger area. throw in pedestrian hostile suburban road design...voila