It's funny, but so many people fight increases in the percentage of taxes to help fund schools. The decision makers who allocate the money have to do more with less. Yet, administrators have hugesalaries in districts that can't get half of the kids to graduate. Hell, they can't even keep track of the kids sometimes. My oldest girl insisted on going to public high school. A full year after she transferred from one school to another, I was receiving automated calls from the old school telling me my kid missed certain periods in the school day. This tells me that attendance really isn't a big deal to the schools.

I'm sure we'd all agree that greater up-front expense to plan schools that are walkable saves money in the long run. Problem is, nobody who makes the decisions about money cares about the long run. By then, their shifts will be over, and it will be somebody else's problem. Everybody wants to assign blame, nobody wants to do anything to fix the problems.