Reply #1: In our state (which is purple) [View All]

[exboyfil]

K-12 education spending outpaced economic growth, inflation, and definitely wages. The way we have handled it is to leave spending to the state universities essentially flat over that period of time. If you add the total spend from local, state, and federal for K-12 and divide by the number of students you get about $14K/student. In our school district we spend about $8700K/student. A quick calculation of this school district shows it to be spending $6K/student based on their reported numbers. The story reported something like $4K/student for the secondary students. Another story (see below) says the spend is $9500/student which is near the state average of $9,855/student and more than is spent in my state. A good question would be why does spending at this level result in these class.
sizes.http://www.nevadaappeal.com/article/20110417/NEWS/110419677

Nevada kicks in more per pupil at a state level than does my state ($5K vs. $4.4K). In my particular school district (which actually spends less per pupil than larger surrounding urban school districts), we spend less per pupil and we do not see the large class sizes than what is experienced in Clark County. A cost of living calculator shows it is 11% more expensive to live in Las Vegas than my community. These types of numbers are in stark contrast to what is actually going on in Clark County. Where is the spending going? I know the answer - Clark County has to deal with a very heterogeneous population of native Spanish speakers than my district. This requires them to spend dollars that my school district does not need to spend.

Schools used to be a very local consideration. It was the responsibility of the local community to educate children. Now I don't know if the spend is heterogenous across the school district, but, if it is not, then Clark County is asking the people of Nevada and the country to spend more per student to help educate their kids than our own kids. You can see why that would cause some level of tension. What used to be considered a local function has moved to being a state and even federal function. It is hard to develop a larger national consensus for such a situation.