$19,000 available per student. That's part of the issue in my opinion. The money is there, but it's not being spent wisely or is being spent on districts having too many administrators and not enough teachers. It's not just a funding issue. There's clearly an issue of how that money is being used but everyone just claims we need to increase funding.
Unlike businesses, schools who spend their money poorly don't go out of business. Instead they just campaign for more funding.
Teachers are incredibly, I don't want anyone to think I'm attacking them. Most do a great job. It's administrators and bad school boards that are the issue, in my opinion and they hide their mistakes/ bad management by claiming they are underfunded.
That's not to say it's possible some schools are, indeed underfunded. I'm just using those two districts as an example. One is considered one of the wealthiest in the state. The other is generally considered to be falling behind and massively underfunded, even though it's budget contains significantly more $$ per student than the "wealthy" district. Therefore, the difference in "quality" between the districts is likely not funding, but management.