The USA spends $15k/student annually which is 30% higher than the global median. Why do U.S. schools have "fundraisers" where kids are incentivized to sell stuff to people?

Comments

• cattywampas@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  1. These are often for extracurricular things like school trips.

  2. Schools are underfunded.

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  • Mirshe@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    3. The schools that aren’t underfunded have millions of dollars in funds earmarked for sports usually.

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    • Ledericas@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      i dont think its for k-12, but its mostly for universities, and colleges.

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  • FenrirIII@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I think #1 is sports. Have you seen some of these stadiums?

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    • lovely_reader@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Public primary and secondary schools do not typically have stadiums.

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  • ThunderWhiskers@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    This doesn’t really address the whole of OP’s question though. They are asking why our schools are so underfunded if we are spending so much more than average per student. The maths don’t math.

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  • fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    3. The US is expensive.

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• turtle@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  One of the major factors to consider here is that public schools in the US are not equally funded by number of students. Instead, most of the funding is provided by state and local property taxes, meaning that richer areas where houses are worth a lot more, get much better funding for their schools. So while those rich areas’ school funding is probably much higher than the global median, the poorer areas’ school funding is likely much lower, in a very high cost of living country in general.

  The other factor to also consider is that public schools in the US have fairly extensive athletic programs, meaning that they spend a lot of the funds to build and maintain things like American Football stadiums, swimming pools, etc., as opposed to only funding actual academic education.

  References:

  en.wikipedia.org/…/Public_school_funding_in_the_U…

  This is the best I could find on short notice about athletic vs academic spending, and it’s only discussing teacher vs coach salaries: linkedin.com/…/more-spent-instruction-coaches-per…

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  • andros_rex@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    The other factor to also consider is that public schools in the US have fairly extensive athletic programs, meaning that they spend a lot of the funds to build and maintain things like American Football stadiums fields, swimming pools, etc., as opposed to only funding actual academic education.

    I bought my lab supplies. Bare minimum $50-200 a month in supplies. Lab chemicals, pencils and notebooks for students that didn’t have any.

    My classroom looked out over the fancy new football and soccer field. One of the middle schools had a field that local semi pro teams would rent out. The district couldn’t even fund busing - we’d have students show up 1-2 hours late every day because of the buses.

    Small towns will fund bonds for football fields and cleats; they don’t give a damn about anything else. If you are good enough coach, you can literally show your penis to students and the administration will cover it up, then quietly help you get a position in a new town.

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    • turtle@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Jeepers creepers, this is so disheartening. I’m sorry that you had to experience that!

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    • k0e3@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Cover up the fact or the penis?

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• wetbeardhairs@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I’ve been in PTA fights over this and yelled at superintendents in multiple school district meetings now. The real answer of where the money is going? Contractors.

  Everything is done by contractors now because it’s easy to sever and it allows organizations to focus on one thing they’re good at. Do you need janitorial staff or do you need to keep things clean? Well the answer is you need to keep things clean - so how? Just pay the contractors because the school board got bribed. Sure, it turns out the contractors cost 3x the cost of a dedicated janitorial staff in the long run, but they were quicker to set up and the board wanted a turnkey solution.

  That’s the approach that every school board uses to answer that question. Need X - ok well we don’t want to hire anyone because that makes people mad about how we use money… so we’ll spend MORE money on Y over the long run for something that will be a permanently reoccurring cost. Anyone go to a school cafeteria recently? Did you get food served on disposable styrofoam treys or were you given a melamine tray and plate with reusable utensils? Just kidding I know the answer to that already. Do we provide school supplies to students at the district level? No, every man for themselves go to walmart and pay $60 for school supplies for each child with all the markup instead of letting the district buy them by the pallet and distribute at the cost of wholesale for 15% the total price of everyone wastefully purchasing their own.

  Don’t forget that school boards are notoriously easy to corrupt. Usually it’s something relatively benign like a board member has a family member that owns a company that does contract work and they were recommended to the rest of the board. But often it is outright bribes.

  But this short sighted view of how to run things is making everything expensive in America. Everything has ten fucking middlemen between you and what you want. And they’re all goddamn contractors now. Cheap in the immediate but far more expensive over time. Why? Because we aren’t allowed to have honest conversations about government expenses anymore. We aren’t allowed to ask for real services for our children because of the short term demands of the bottom line.

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  • LadyButterfly@lazysoci.al ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Oh god this may be the most depressing social media comment I’ve ever read. Thanks for raising awareness

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  • conditional_soup@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    A friend and I just had a conversation today about how using contractors instead of CalTrans crews to build CAHSR has probably meaningfully contributed to the cost overruns.

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  • krakenfury@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    just do the same for:

    • Hospitals
    • Universities
    • Utilities
    • Waste management
    • Infrastructure

    And in a couple of decades, you can undo everything your parents worked for, pull the ladder up behind you, and leave your children a dystopian hellscape!

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    • Jeffool@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Sadly this isn’t new, and hospitals are an example that comes to mind for me. At least one in particular. In 2007 there was a huge scandal about the treatment of US soldiers at Walter Reed, which was thought of as one of the top military hospitals. The initial reporting was from the Washington Post and largely focused on how the privatization of care and the contracting process itself had failed the patients so horribly.

      I vaguely recall that building upkeep was delayed years because of contracting issues, and that the staff was slashed from hundreds (plural) to less than a hundred, claiming they couldn’t find qualified candidates. There were complaints about rats, roaches, and black mold. I’m also fairly certain there was a story of one guy saying he was handed a shitty photocopy of the grounds and it took him hours walking around in a hospital gown to find his room. Two weeks later he found the person who was supposed to be running his case, and the case manager said they had no idea where the patient had been those two weeks.

      Looking now, Wikipedia doesn’t even mention privatization or contracting issues. The one (2010) complaint of this on the Talk page gets a reply saying “well the military was ultimately responsible for holding those contractors accountable,” and it ends there. Not wrong, but still feels like it’s not giving a full account of the story.

      Obviously this is just conjecture now, but honestly the staffing part reminds me just like how, as I’m job hunting now, I notice companies keep posting the same ads, saying they can’t find anyone who wants to work, while offering peanuts for very high requirements, and getting hundreds of applications. I’m sure lots of them aren’t qualified, but I’m confident some of them are. I’ve even been offered significantly less than my last job paid, for a position (at a different employer) that would’ve been a manager for my previous level. I can only imagine how crazy it gets in the medical field.

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    • wetbeardhairs@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I see what you did there.

      For real though it’s going to be hard to undo all of this. The political process for all public services is being hung by a noose made by contractors and GOP voters.

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  • Flocklesscrow@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    You nailed it

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• givesomefucks@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Textbooks are a racket and not just for college students.

  Most of the money spent on education involves grifts for stuff like that, not for actual important shit like schools or teachers.

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• JackbyDev@programming.dev ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  PSA, whenever someone asks you to buy something for a fundraiser just donate instead. Especially if you don’t want what they’re selling. They’ll get 100% of that instead of like… I honestly don’t even know, but it can’t be more than 25%.

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  • shaggyb@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    30-50% if its an actual physical item is pretty normal. If it’s something like a discount card or coupon book, profit approaches 90%.

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  • viking@infosec.pub ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    If I don’t want something, I give nothing. Most fundraisers are pure extortion, and I can’t be bothered to check if something is legit or lining someone’s pocket. “No” is a full sentence.

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    • JackbyDev@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Obviously, I’m not saying you’re obligated to. I’m saying if you want to financially support them donations are better.

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  • desktop_user@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    girls out cookies?

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    • andrewta@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Dry, stale, over priced.

      Wouldn’t bother.

      Just donate the money directly to that Girl Scout group.

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    • JackbyDev@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      What about them?

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• M0oP0o@mander.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Likely a similar reason that the us spends more per capita then just about anyone else on healthcare but get some of the worst results, pure greed and corruption.

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  • Squizzy@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    And on Military and is getting dog walked by a failed state on a global stage. Number one military spend by every metric and they managed to lose the cold war 30 years after it “ended”.

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    • M0oP0o@mander.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Correct me if I am wrong but they have also lost every conflict they have been in where they had to be an occupying force. The largest military spending in the world and so far they have failed vs:

      Korea Vietnam Afghanistan Iran Iraq Niger 1/2 of Russia (the civil war in 1918) Indonesia Laos Cuba (well that one is more on the CIA) Cambodia Somalia

      I am sure I am missing some, but its wild to go though the many many conflicts the us has been involved in.

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• isekaihero@ani.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  This is a good question. I live in the USA and most fundraisers are for clubs, sports, and extracurricular activities. But we spend so much $ for our kids schooling, and I believe in other countries like Japan the school will actually give clubs money to spend on supplies, so they don’t need to do this. Why are our schools so expensive and give so little back to the students?

  Also our teachers are underpaid for the work they do. So are the support staff. Cleaners, IT, all underpaid.

  Do you know who isn’t underpaid? The administrators. Our schools have district offices with lots of overpaid administrators. I work in IT at a school and I make the same as the cleaners do. I can’t afford a car, and live in a trailer park. During the last round of contract negotiations, the superintendent negotiated a 7% annual raise on top of his already six-figure salary. My group? We got 2.5% which was less than inflation. It was during COVID and inflation was about 7%.

  Where is all the money going? Look at the district offices. We have a problem with corruption in this country. Everyone wants to be a feudal lord and rule over the serfs. All our money is going to create and prop up an aristocracy, which has so far managed to hide itself from public view. We need to shed light on the aristocrats.

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  • Jenpocalypse@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    At my school, the books are falling apart and missing pages. The wifi barely works. The computers are missing keys. The bathrooms are infested with roaches. The outside looks like a prison yard.

    But our administrators got themselves some fancy new offices this year.

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  • wetbeardhairs@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Honestly it’s not the administrators. They usually reduce overall headcount by performing the tasks of multiple other dedicated people with one role.

    The answer of where is the money going? Contractors. Everything is done by contractors now because it’s easy to sever and it allows organizations to focus on one thing they’re good at. Do you need janitorial staff or do you need to keep things clean? Well the answer is you need to keep things clean - so how? Just pay the contractors because the school board got bribed. Sure, it turns out the contractors cost 3x the cost of a dedicated janitorial staff in the long run, but they were quicker to set up and the board wanted a turnkey solution.

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• kersploosh@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Comparing things like this between countries is not straightforward. For example, Australia spends $14.1k per student while New Zealand spends $8.6k. That’s about 5.2% of GDP for both countries. From those numbers, would we conclude that Australia is overpaying, or New Zealand is underpaying, or that the two countries are comparable?

  https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/education-spending-by-country

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  • Speculater@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Damn, Noway being only 4% of GDP is shocking, because they also pay their teachers well and have great education in general.

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    • kersploosh@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I think that goes to my point about simple comparisons being difficult. Norway has a high GDP relative to its size, so 4% might be more than enough for their situation. You also have to account for things like the labor cost of teachers, which varies by country.

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• theotherbelow@lemmynsfw.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  In my experience the outfits target schools to exploit the children’s relationship and free labor with family. We are talking incredibly low quality junk you cannot find at stores or really even online.

  At my school the goal was to sell like $1000 worth a crap to get a limo ride to a local restaurant.

  6,7,8 year old etc do not have a value of wealth. “Oh daddy/mommy/grandpa, I really really want the limo ride” etc.

  There’s no legitimate reason for such a thing to exist other than pure exploitation. After experiencing that I would demand to opt out for my children.

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  • lovely_reader@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I absolutely agree, and having lived through it, it’s infuriating the way they intentionally exclude/call out kids whose parents haven’t signed them up or who haven’t sold any trash. They’ll send the kids home to sign up 10 email addresses and on the second day they’ll come back with some piece of shit stuffed animal for everybody who did it. A little kid doesn’t understand that the whole thing is a fucking scam. They’re just sitting in school watching the rest of their class play with cool new toys.

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• Fiivemacs@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Not American, and I have no factual answer but I assume it’s because the people at the top just take all the money and leave the schools to fend for themselves. Typical corporate nonsense.

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  • thefartographer@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    You’d think so, and while you’re right that the people at the top make way too much money, docking their entire salary at a large district like mine would only be enough to fund maaaaaaaaaaaaybe just under 5% of the schools in our district. And then you’d be left without leadership. If you cut everyone in my pay scale, you’d have enough to fund all the schools and then some, but you wouldn’t have teachers, custodians, tech workers, etc.

    But here’s something interesting: during the pandemic, since athletics funds were already allocated and athletic events were cancelled, we were allowed to use those funds as we saw fit within the district. Suddenly, we were able to feed every student and staff member for free. Yee haw, welcome to Texan education…

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  • imsufferableninja@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Public schools are run by the local government, so “corporate nonsense” doesn’t really make sense. They aren’t corporations.

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    • wetbeardhairs@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      School board officials are frequently bribed to hire expensive contractors.

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• Akasazh@feddit.nl ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  the median state spent $64,865 per prisoner for the year.

  Source

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  • chunes@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I guess slavery is more profitable than teaching kids.

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    • Akasazh@feddit.nl ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      priorities

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• aesthelete@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  It encourages then to develop that grindset early.

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• ExtantHuman@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Global median include countries that might not hold school in a dedicated building, for starters. Also shit just costs more here in general.

  Those fundraisers.are usually for extra stuff, too. Big Field trips or events.

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• FartMaster69@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  The real issue is these funds aren’t evenly distributed per student, school districts are funded by property tax which leads to poorer neighborhoods getting considerably less funding.

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  • andros_rex@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I worked high poverty district - like, basically all students got free breakfast and lunch, because so many were eligible it wouldn’t make sense to even check.

    The district got white flight to shit. No white kids in the middle or high school. There was one elementary school that the rich fuckers would send its kids to. That school was well funded. Teachers from there would show up in coordinated outfits, the kids weren’t thrown in classrooms with permanent subs, they actually got taught. It was in the rich neighborhood, so it had money - both the property tax shit and an actual fucking PTA.

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• Alexstarfire@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Looking at the global median isn’t a good comparison, for starters. Many of those school systems aren’t comparable.

  That said, there’s not likely to be one reason. I could guess at them, but I’d rather not since some will inevitably be wrong.

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• Ledericas@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  most of the funding for public goes into administration, and whats left is for the “schools themselves” which is usually not much, and many schools remain underfunded for generations.

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• ssfckdt@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Because the money goes to do-nothing administrators’ salaries, as well as urgent purchases as a result of bad or zero planning

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• apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Have to teach kids to beg for the bare essentials early in life. That way they’ll never know it could be different.

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• dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Others may have different experiences, but AFAIK schools tend to be funded by the property taxes in their district. Combined with rampant, unchecked, failed desegreation, and you have some schools that are swimming in cash while everyone else begs to close that gap.

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• humble_boatsman@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  The question might not be stupid. But that stat calculation sounds questionable. Do you have a source? Does that include social spending like the dedication of parents time and personal expenses such as in South Korea? Is that government spending? At fundraisers only a USA thing?

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  • Revan343@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Regardless of how exactly the stat is calculated, I am sure it is massively inflated by college football budgets

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  • Pringles@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    This gives the figures with sources: worldpopulationreview.com/…/per-pupil-spending-by…

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• ClanOfTheOcho@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Not the only reason, but the cost of living is higher in the U.S. than most other locales on the planet.

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  • Phoenix3875@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    That was my first reaction. I didn’t find the global average spending number reported by the OP, but according to this page, the 2019 average spending of $15,500 per student (38% higher than OECD average) did consider purchasing power.

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• BradleyUffner@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  All you have to do is look at how much of the collected money actually guess to the school then ask what happens to the rest. That’s why.

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• agent_nycto@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Well I’d reckon that that 15k is an average. Rich kid schools don’t need fundraising but poor districts do. Oh yeah and the funding for schools comes from local districts so if you live in a rich neighborhood your school is way more funded than if you live in the poor areas, which is why people are obsessed with that info if they have kids and want to move.

  Also not all departments get the same funding. The football team gets a lot of the budget but the arts get scraps at best. So even if you’re in an ok school, because of how they spend the money, specific classes might need help.

  Why the football team? The games bring in money, people donate because of the local team, and the odd lottery that one of those kids becomes a professional and might help out in the future.

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• leftzero@lemmynsfw.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Because capitalism!

  Image

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• crusa187@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Criminally underfunded, plus capitalism as a value.

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• Blaze@sopuli.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  !AskUSA@discuss.online

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• HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Because you are measuring against the global median while not adjusting for purchasing power parity. American costs are going to be far higher than the global median.

  Generally, it is seen that American primary and secondary schools are underfunded.

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• L0rdMathias@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Because the public school funding comes from public taxpayer money. This means the school does not get to choose how to spend it since the money belongs to the people. The people have voted and greenlit several pre-approved items for schools to spend money on, but anything outside of that needs to be approved by a vote.

  Getting people to vote on this item is a Heraclean effort to say the least. Education budget often is the least immediately impactful thing on the ballot, if it makes it that far. Especially in states with strong traditional religious areas. For example, Puritans don’t believe that sports are something that kids should take seriously cuz it’s a game (literally something along the lines of: Games can be pleasurable, seeking pleasure is sin you should only seek God, therefore games are sinful). They don’t want their taxes going towards such sinful programs so they will always vote against it. This perspective is rooted in zealous obedience and is not something other people are willing to fight against.

  TL;Dr It’s easier for schools to just get private funding themselves and sidestep the public budget restrictions, than it is to get a majority in the voting pool to approve the vote and implement new school budget item.

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• Archangel1313@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Because they’re already spending $15/student on basics. Anything extra isn’t covered. The problem isn’t that they’re being over-funded…it’s that they’re under-funded.

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  • 52fighters@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    That’s $15,000 not $15. The answer is schools are corrupt fronts for contractors who milk the district of every dollar. Construction, service, demolition, and reconstruction of buildings is expensive!

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• RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  There are some that blame administration costs, which is correct because of the multiple layers of redundancy in US schools - each district has its own administration, plus more at the state level - but some also blame the riding costs of benefits.

  The latter seems far more of a right wing target because they attack the employee getting benefits, not the insurance companies jacking up the costs of benefits like health or life insurance.

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