This might be the case in your school, but where I grew up in the ghetto, the schools were absolutely falling apart. We didn't have the money to maintain vegetation so most of the school used sand. Our sports courts were forever falling apart (though luckily even bent basketball hoops work well enough to satisfy bored teens). Our library couldn't afford to stay open. Some of our classes were administered in trailers because the school didn't have enough classroom space. The power would go out from time to time because the school didn't have enough money to upgrade their power distribution infrastructure. There were never enough textbooks to go around and in certain classes you would share textbooks with a classmate. Lockers were never maintained and routinely vandalized when they seemed to be in good-repair. The water fountains had questionably potable water (I've had better water on hiking trails). We would frequently run out of soap in the bathrooms. And of course the quality of instruction was abysmal.

I agree that local property taxes aren't the whole picture but they determine _quite a bit_. I know kids who grew up in more middle (or higher) class neighborhoods had higher property tax values and didn't suffer many of these problems as a result. As it is growing up in the hood was a pretty harrowing experience, but let me tell you that I did not look forward through trudging through sand into a trailer to take class by an unmotivated teacher who just wanted to clock out. Sure American education is still horribly patch-worky and quality is highly determined by local government policies, but there's a base level of dysfunction that can be solved through funding schools outside of property taxes.