[OoTLink]

Education is also one of those places people hate spending money on - kinda like daycare and babysitting. My school district was so poor at one point that the school I was in got condemned by the Fire Marshall and they moved us out into portable classroom buildings. Remodeling all of the schools that had been built in the 50s and seldom fixed drove the district into bankruptcy, and was seen as this huge scandalous thing when it was the only responsible thing to do.

Of course you're not going to see change if people don't want to spend money on it - and usually when they do it's pretty demanding (see the standardized test stuff).

[maxerickson]

In a lot of areas population change is a complicating factor. The elementary school I attended has since closed, along with 2 or 3 others in the district. High school graduating classes are also substantially smaller. That is a huge hit to the budget.

An area with a growing population would have problems too, having to find money to construct space that may or may not be needed in 10 years.