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. And when we do open up those conversations, the calculus shows the quarterly expense of hiring a permanent employee is more than maintaining the contract even though that employee is cheaper at the 5 year mark. We aren’t allowed to dig ourselves out once we’re stuck in the pit bought by contracts.
Edit: To expand on the list of contractors that now handle (BADLY) the same work done by roles that were traditionally employees who gave a shit and were held to a standard of care and duty:
- Cafeteria food preparation (dont even get me started on the quality and cost of aramark
dogprisoncafeteria food) - Cafeteria cleanup
- Bathroom sanitation
- Basic plumbing like unclogging fucking toilets
- landscaping
- replacing lightbulbs (!)
- basic IT services
I’ve heard rumblings of replacing:
- student counselors
- school nurse
- bus drivers
- HR
About the only jobs safe are the principals and teachers and the football coach and that is only true while unions exist.
Oh god this may be the most depressing social media comment I’ve ever read. Thanks for raising awareness
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. There’s one instance I’m aware of where a contractor submitted a cost overruns to the authority for reimbursement on THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS of long distance calls. In 2017. Motherfucker, use Skype, email somebody, God damn. But we both know that was a scam, and thankfully, so did the inspector general.
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!
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.
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.
“well the military was ultimately responsible for holding those contractors accountable,”
This is arguably one of the worst aspects of contracting any kind of service. The contractors act like they don’t have a duty to listen nor are they willing to be held accountable. Once the contractor and the signor shake hands then the contractors just go and do the worst fucking job possible with no one to steer the ship. The money has been spent, and accountability is nowhere to be found.
You nailed it
- Cafeteria food preparation (dont even get me started on the quality and cost of aramark
-
These are often for extracurricular things like school trips.
-
Schools are underfunded.
Wrt 1, teachers buy out of pocket and request classroom supplies such as tissues, chalk, pencils, erasers, notebook paper, art supplies, graph paper, compasses, protractors, safety scissors, glue, , hand sanitizer, etc
- The schools that aren’t underfunded have millions of dollars in funds earmarked for sports usually.
i dont think its for k-12, but its mostly for universities, and colleges.
You would be incorrect. Many wealthier high schools put a ton of money into their sports facilities and equipment. Several HS in my state operate 10-thousand-plus-seating stadiums that look a lot like collegiate or semiprofessional facilities.
I think #1 is sports. Have you seen some of these stadiums?
Public primary and secondary schools do not typically have stadiums.
Some do indeed. The one near me has a pretty ridiculous one that makes me sad for the academics that it is leeching from.
Cattywampus knows what’s up
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.
- The US is expensive.
-
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
stadiumsfields, swimming pools, etc., as opposed to only funding actual academic education.Edit, I’ve retracted the link about teacher vs coach salaries because it’s about College sports, not primary and secondary schools. I still haven’t found a good source for this info regarding those.
PS: Aside from fundraisers, it’s fairly common to hear teachers telling stories of having to spend their own money to buy supplies for their classes.
PPS: It’s also common to hear stories of poor families doing everything they can to move to richer areas just so their kids can benefit from the much better-funded schools. I’ve even heard of situations where they will register their kids with the address of a relative who lives in a better-funded area, for the same reason.
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.
Jeepers creepers, this is so disheartening. I’m sorry that you had to experience that!
Cover up the fact or the penis?
The fact. He had been moved from school to school before.
He made his student athletes work out naked and showed them his dick to show them “what a real man is like.” It’s amazing how many news articles leave out those details.
Also the fact that the Governor and the State Superintendent are known to be golfing buddies with Ringalings superintendent…. It’s almost as if Oklahoma systemically covers up the abuse of children….
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.
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”.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
the median state spent $64,865 per prisoner for the year.
I guess slavery is more profitable than teaching kids.
priorities
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%.
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%.
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.
Obviously, I’m not saying you’re obligated to. I’m saying if you want to financially support them donations are better.
girlscout cookies?
Dry, stale, over priced.
Wouldn’t bother.
Just donate the money directly to that Girl Scout group.
why would I support the people? I just want the cookies and to see the struggle of delivery.
What about them?
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.
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
Damn, Norway being only 4% of GDP is shocking, because they also pay their teachers well and have great education in general.
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.
Also the sort of things the schools spend money on. I don’t know from experience, but I think US schools pay for police officers to be at the school. That seems crazy to me, and expensive.
Because the money goes to do-nothing administrators’ salaries, as well as urgent purchases as a result of bad or zero planning
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.
In my experience the outfits target schools to exploit the children’s relationships 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.
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.
It encourages then to develop that grindset early.
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.
