Stopping the population growth is the answer to all shortages and climbing costs of everything.

ttbn,
Too many people are too educated or rather, indoctrinated to comprehend logic !

Rapid rail would allow many more school sites to be considered and former city central office blocks could be repurposed as those emptied to relocate to more economical sites and we could do more online study courses? As a prelude to tertiary ed and self reliant learning? Kids need more book reading assignments as well? As opposed to being parked on a terminal? Good reading skills will allow almost any study as self taught outcomes?
Alan B.

Evidence shows that it is the poor quality of teachers due to political Left indoctrination that has brought education to its knees.
In order to financially gain as much as possible, teachers' unions have prostituted their members without any consideration whatsoever to the students. Now that these students are adults their indoctrination is being past on to the students of today !
In a sense, dumbing-down is snow-balling !

"But first, old thinking about schools needs to change to allow for the opportunities that the future presents and to avoid an inevitable shortage of places in suitable locations."

I told you all the answer 5 years ago.

You take THE BEST TEACHERS IN THE COUNTRY
- For every grade of primary school and every subject of high school.

And then you develop an online curriculum, that is both completely transparent for parents, and readily available for every student.

It might be online learning which poses some issues in itself as kids need to be around other kids, but it also fixes some problems like bullying and lumping problem kids in with other problem kids which is not a good outcome either.

Every kid has access to THE BEST TEACHING by THE BEST TEACHER, instead of having some teachers much better than others.

Pandemics - No problem
Live out the back of Burke - No problem
Need to take kids out of school because of bullying - No problem

Had you have listened to good sense years ago, we wouldn't be facing half the problems we do now.

You say the problem is old thinking, then put your money where your mouth is.

Armchair Critic- I think your idea about online learning has a great deal of merit. Kudos.