The Bay Area is bigger than the HN bubble. There are some desperately poor school districts.
Did you spend one nanosecond of time doing any research before firing off your oh so pious comment about sparing a few pennies to save the children?
A very quick google found me ed.gov, which is the US Department of Education. Here is an exact quote [1]:
ED currently administers a budget of $67.3 billion
in discretionary appropriations (including
discretionary Pell Grant funding) and operates
programs that touch on every area and level of
education. The Department's elementary and
secondary programs annually serve nearly 16,900
school districts and approximately 50 million
students attending more than 98,000 public
schools and 28,000 private schools. Department
programs also provide grant, loan, and work-study
assistance to more than 13 million postsecondary
students.
And in case you slept thru civics 101 class, the very next paragraph from the ed.gov website points out:
That said, it is important to point out that
education in America is primarily a State and
local responsibility, and ED's budget is only
a small part of both total national education
spending ...
I did read your admonition a few days ago, and I should have apologized then.
I will be much more careful with the tone of my postings going forward.
Here's an example of excessive education spending in Oregon [1]:
A guy was a college professor in Oregon for 16 years
His final salary was $62,000 per year
He currently gets a pension of $214,000 per year
This kind of thing is endemic to public spending, whether it is in Oregon or in California or at the Federal level. Education or Defense, it doesn't matter. The billions simply disappear.
That's why, fundamentally, "a few million for the children" won't make a difference. At all.
[1] http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2012/03/oregon_...
Throwing money at a few schools will just mask the fundamental underlying organisational, logistical and philosophical failings of the system.
If you really wanted to attack the commenter, you could have compared rates of growth since 1980 in both defense and education, or compared defense/education spending ratios of other countries to our own, or anything other than what you did: posted the DoE's budget, a count of the number of students, schools, and school districts in the US, and a mention that most school financing is funded by local taxes as if it were something you didn't know was common knowledge.
But when I point out that the federal government is already spending $67.3 billion, that's not enough of a counter-argument. That's "common knowledge", so I needed to provide extensive additional information to refute his statement?
I think we'll have to "agree to disagree" about this one.