Well something is wrong with the way the money is allocated. They pay the teachers crap. For example in my county, we pay in taxes (county, fed and state) $1,033,500,000 for 79,000 students. We pay 13K per student. Average class 25 students, average yearly per class cost: $325,000. This ain’t rocket science but a scam. Why can’t they afford pencils and erasers? somebody is dipping into the cash cow.
*This doesn’t include the debt the county goes into building new schools.
I have a good friend who was on the school board for a number of years.
A number of things eat up the dollars.
One is special education. He said a tiny percentage of the students use up 50% of the dollars. When 1 student requires a full time minder, it only takes a few to eat up the money.
Another is the insane standards that are applied to school construction. School buildings are some of the most expensive buildings in the country.
This source says the national average for a middle school is $242.96 per square foot, or a building cost of $46,693 per student.
https://webspm.com/Articles/2015/07/01/School-Costs.aspx
You’re one of the fortunate - average per pupil cost for us is $18k, with average class size of 10. Number of students is down 20% over the last decade, but number of teachers and support staff remains constant.
The cost per student for one year in high school is now more than tuition at the University for an in-stater.