By AnneMarie Schieber
There are plenty of gripes about today’s public schools, but it is easy to understand why nothing gets fixed: the money keeps pouring in. Public school administrators often cry broke despite getting billions of dollars from federal, state, and local governments. Public schools run out of money because so much of what they get is wasted. For example, my local school district spent $17 million on a new administration building even though enrollment has fallen one percent every year for the past decade. After that, the administration asked voters to approve a $340 million bond issue, in part to replace a perfectly good swimming pool. None of these items have anything to do with improving student performance but voters often say yes to these spending requests because they are sold “in the name of the children,” and the public schools are often the…
