I think the schools need more money. Should probably tax the citizens more.
I realize this is sarcasm, but in some ways, you might be more right than wrong in my humble opinion. But, it depends on how the money is spent. In front offices, on new athletic facilities, and things of that sort? Not gonna help much in my opinion.
To solve a problem, first gotta identify the problem(s). Seems like most people agree that a lot of school problems start at home. Others might say it's hard to recruit/keep good teachers with limited pay and questionable working conditions/support. Some people might say lack of discipline in schools. There are many other issues too. But is more money the answer? Well actually, it might be if it is spent wisely. It's an investment after all, not just an expense. It's an investment in our kids, communities, and society at large. I would be willing to pay more taxes towards our schools if it was spent in ways that made sense towards the betterment of our kids. And in my humble opinion, that spending would simply look like this.
1. Limit class room size of students. This might be one hard number such as no more than 15 students per class. Or maybe it's scaled depending on the performance levels and needs of the students in the subject class. Bottom line though is to have more teachers and fewer students per teacher. I'd love to see classes never have more than 15-20 students per class. Try it for say 10 years and see what happens. I think we'd see discipline problems go down, student learning go up, teacher stress go down, teacher satisfaction go up, and for the test score geeks the test scores would go up. But it would take more money.
2. To get more teachers and better teachers, better pay has to be part of this. At least better pay down the road so a teacher can see a brighter future in front of them. With better working conditions (smaller class sizes), good teachers would have higher job satisfaction and stay around for the long haul.
That's really about it. Smaller class sizes would allow for more one-on-one teaching, fewer kids feeling like they are falling through the cracks, student problems/needs/issues could be more easily and readily identified and dealt with, and school safety concerns would (hopefully) go down.
But it would take more $ and it would have to be invested wisely in our students.
And for full disclosure, I went to private high school back in the 80's, my child goes to public school now, and my wife and I fully support public education 100%.