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?

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• hypnicjerk@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  without digging into the numbers, i can pretty confidently say that schools are more than 30% more expensive than the global median in the US. staffing costs especially.

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• givesomefucks@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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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• apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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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• cattywampas@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

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

  2. Schools are underfunded.

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  • ThunderWhiskers@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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 ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    3. The US is expensive.

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  • Mirshe@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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 ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

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

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  • FenrirIII@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

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

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    • lovely_reader@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Public primary and secondary schools do not typically have stadiums.

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• Fiivemacs@lemmy.ca ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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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  • imsufferableninja@sh.itjust.works ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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 ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      School board officials are frequently bribed to hire expensive contractors.

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  • thefartographer@lemm.ee ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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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