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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

There's nothing "incorrect" about what the parent commenter said. Compare Frederick Douglas Academy in Austin to OPRF in Oak Park, a 15 minute walk away. Urban schools get state and federal dollars --- but so do wealthy suburban schools. It is in fact the case that wealthy families opt in to de facto private school systems; no jazz-hands about subsidies and mismanagement gets you around that fact.

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Yes. To give a concrete example, California schools on the whole spend about $14,913 per student [1], while Palo Alto spends $23,038 [2].

[1]: https://www.ppic.org/publication/financing-californias-publi...

[2]: https://papie.org/about/f-a-q/

A more accurate and comparable figure is $16,085 per pupil[0]. And that has grown very much since then to now $20,855 per pupil, a record-breaking figure (like all the years in the preceding decade--just look at that chart!)[1]. Also consider that in California under-privileged (low-income, ESL, foster children) schools do indeed get lots of extra resources and grants[2].

Your figure is apparently only for "current operations (e.g., staff, materials)" from 2018-19. But that doesn't reflect the already-absurd and ever-growing true cost of California's broken education system. And it isn't directly comparable to your figure for PAUSD's total budget.

"Reflecting the changes to Proposition 98 funding noted above, total per-pupil expenditures from all sources are projected to be $15,654 in 2017-18 and $16,085 in 2018-19"[0]

"K-12 per-pupil funding [in 2022-23] totals $15,261 Proposition 98 General Fund—its highest level ever—and $20,855 per pupil when accounting for all funding sources."[1]

[0]: https://ebudget.ca.gov/2018-19/pdf/BudgetSummary/K-12Educati... (p. 2)

[1]: https://www.ebudget.ca.gov/2022-23/pdf/BudgetSummary/K-12Edu... (p. 3)

[2]: https://www.ebudget.ca.gov/2021-22/pdf/BudgetSummary/K-12Edu... (pp. 11-16)

I'm not sure how you're getting that figure for $23,038. Also, accordion drop downs from an FAQ page may not be the best place to cite information from (too much irrelevant information to sift through)

Click on "Why do Palo Alto schools need PiE?"

Interestingly enough, the page later says that the annual budget is 294M on a student body of ~10k. That's more like 28K per student (making the above point that rich districts pay more per student stronger).

It’s incorrect to say local property taxes are the “primary” mechanism for school funding because state funding exceeds local funding. https://educationdata.org/public-education-spending-statisti...

> States contribute a total of $357.0 billion to K-12 public education or $7,058 per student.

> Local governments contribute $347.4 billion total or $6,868 per student.

I’m assuming the “system” here is talking about the national education system, since that seems to be the topic of the immediately preceding posts. California and SFUD might be different.

Okay, I am corrected. Only ~$350 billion out of ~$750 billion is local. So it's not the majority nationwide. It's still 7 out of 15 dollars. That's a substantial enough minority to have very disparate outcomes.

You can just take pairs of schools in adjoining neighborhoods/municipalities and compare. Their budgets are all public. That's what I did here.

I know people who go to private schools because they don't want to put a burden on the state.

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