[tombert]

I'm not sure what you're suggesting. Individual districts are going to have problems the the rest of the state or country don't know/care about. Having a representative for these districts makes sense.

For example, in my district (Brownsville in Brooklyn), we have an almost tragically poorly-ranked school system, due largely to bad funding and high crime rates in the area. I don't expect someone from Midtown Manhattan to care a whole lot about these specific problems (I know I certainly didn't when I lived in Washington Heights).

In an ideal world I guess I'd agree, everyone would care about everything at the exact appropriate weight, but that's not the world we live in. Certain problems will go ignored if we don't have fairly-granular representation for an area.

[jandrese]

That's not a great example because really the school budget should be set at the state level and distributed evenly to every district based on student headcount.

You do make a valid point that many issues are local and that could be lost in a system where the party is focused at the state level instead of the local level. Proportional representation systems are prone to having this issue for example.

[tombert]

Some areas are going to require more funding than others. For example, certain areas are wealthier and as a result are less reliant on the after-school programs, while poorer areas have a higher likelihood to be single-parent, or both parents having to work, meaning that the after-school programs are vital.

That's just one example, but it's not as simple as "give a certain amount of money per kid to the schools", and saying this is reductionist.