“Districts are making these difficult trade-offs at a time when schools are raising academic standards and business leaders are pushing schools to prepare a work force with better skills.
‘We can’t have the doublespeak where everybody talksabout how important education is to our being globally competitive,’ said Daniel A. Domenech, the executive director of the American Association of School Administrators, ‘and then education is not a priority when it comes to funding.’
In Pennsylvania, although the state’s education budget is now above prerecession levels, a large proportion of money is being diverted to replenish underfunded pensions, leaving less for actual classrooms, said Michael Wood, research director at the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center.”
Kansas parents and teachers are seeing these issues, too.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/22/education/subtract-teachers-add-pupils-math-of-todays-jammed-schools.html