I suppose there are few talented, hard working people who want to teach, and they command a premium. Education is expensive and underfunded.

As a parent/carer you probably are much more motivated than an underpaid teacher who wanted to do something else anyway, and you don't have to motivate yourself with money.

By extension, IME, motivated and talented teachers in any school (good or bad) can do wonders. There just aren't that many. And as you say, school environment tends to be a race to the bottom - if Johnny can watch Tiktok during maths, I'll do the same.

▲ rahimnathwani 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

  Education is expensive and underfunded.

Expensive yes. Underfunded depends on where you are.

San Francisco's school district has an annual operating budget that equates to $28k per student.

I've heard people in San Francisco say that schools here are underfunded. When I ask them how much we spend per student per year, their guess is usually less than half of the actual amount.

▲ mmcclure 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Are you saying that's a lot or a little? Tuition for most (non-religious) competitive private schools in San Francisco is easily twice that amount.

▲ zaphar 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Nearly every time we try to fix this problem with money it fails. The problem is not money. All else being equal there is little to no correlation between spend and outcome. Money get's touted by schools and politicatians as a way of pretending to care but not actually do any of the work to improve outcomes.

What does tend to correlate with money and also correlates with outcomes is parental involvement. Solving that problem requires societal and economic change in a district though not giving the school more money.

▲ rahimnathwani 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

  "Tuition for most (non-religious) competitive private schools in San Francisco is easily twice that amount."

No it's not 'easily twice that amount'.

For each of the grades K-12, here is the % of non-religious private schools in San Francisco that charge $56k or more:

   K:  0%
   1:  0%
   2:  0%
   3:  0%
   4:  0%
   5:  0%
   6:  3%
   7:  3%
   8:  3%
   9: 71%
  10: 71%
  11: 71%
  12: 71%

	▲	lazyasciiart 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		cost per student is higher for high school students. So if you take an average across all grades for public schools and then compare that to specific cost per grade at private schools, of course private schools are going to look relatively cheaper for younger students.

▲ rahimnathwani 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm saying it's a lot. See my other comment here for my reasoning:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46008035

▲ mmcclure 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I think your reasoning is flawed, but fine...if the goal is to try and have the cheapest possible one room school house. That $200k gets eaten up pretty quick by things like security, janitorial, building maintenance, support staff like principals, librarians, guidance counselors etc etc. If you’re meaning to include total cost for the full time employees (the teachers) in the list, then the salaries are a lot less attractive once you’re done covering benefits, etc.

I've got multiple kids, so I'll admit I think about schools here a lot. The absolute cheapest private schools I've seen in San Francisco are subsidized by religious institutions. The tuition for those schools per child is roughly $28k. Non religious private schools usually start in the $40k range and can easily get into the $50s and well beyond.

My point is that it's hard to point at some issue of inefficient public bureaucracy, because clearly private institutions aren't able to do it any cheaper. I would also argue they wouldn't try, because their goal is a good education, or at least better than the public alternative (that only spends $28k per kid).

▲ rahimnathwani 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

  "I think your reasoning is flawed, but fine...if the goal is to try and have the cheapest possible one room school house."

I was generous in my estimate for each of the line items. I chose a one room school house as an example because it's easy to grok, and anything larger would be cheaper due to economies of scale.

  "I've got multiple kids, so I'll admit I think about schools here a lot."

Although I have only one child (in 4th grade), I think about schools a lot, too.

  "The absolute cheapest private schools I've seen in San Francisco are subsidized by religious institutions. The tuition for those schools per child is roughly $28k."

This $28k number is false. Most parochial schools charge about $12k. Here is a breakdown by grade level of the number of parochial schools in SF that serve that grade level, and the median tuition among those schools for that grade:

          #    Median sticker price
  Pre-K   7    $16,610
   K     29    $11,530
   1     29    $11,530
   2     29    $11,175
   3     29    $11,175
   4     29    $11,175
   5     29    $11,175
   6     30    $11,519
   7     30    $11,519
   8     30    $11,519
   9      4    $31,725
  10      4    $31,725
  11      4    $31,725
  12      4    $31,725

  "Non religious private schools usually start in the $40k range and can easily get into the $50s and well beyond."

This 'usually start in the $40k range' is also false. For each of the grades K-5, 33-39% of non-parochial schools in SF charge less than $40k. For each of the grades 6-8, 30% of non-parochial schools in SF charge less than $40k.

  "because clearly private institutions aren't able to do it any cheaper"

Non-parochial private schools don't typically price based on cost. The schools that have high demand (due to parents and student population) can charge more. So they don't need to manage their costs tightly. And they can spend lots of money on marketing.

Moreover, not all students pay sticker price. So looking at the sticker prices (which I've listed above) may give an inflated view of total income.

  "because their goal is a good education"

Their goal is happy customers (parents). Different schools achieve this in different ways. Some parents choose a school not based on the expected quality of education but based on the expected networking opportunities for themselves and for their child.

▲ mmcclure 3 hours ago | parent [-]

    I was generous in my estimate for each of the line items. I chose a one room school house as an example because it's easy to grok, and anything larger would be cheaper due to economies of scale.

I would argue that economies of scale don't apply to education in the same way they apply to other businesses at large. Sure, you theoretically get the benefits of scale with central organization, buildings, centralized services, etc, but once you get to the classrooms themselves most of the cost simply scales linearly with the number of students.

    This $28k number is false. Most parochial schools charge about $12k.

I'm not sure what we're talking about here anymore. You're using K-8 as the dominating factor for this gotcha a few times in this thread. There are more K-8 parochial schools, yes. "Most parochial schools charge about $12k" is true, unless you're talking about high school. Exactly 1 parochial school is less than $30k (SF Christian, at $16k). From there (limited to religious schools):

    - Sacred Heart ($31k)
    - Archbishop Riordan ($32k)
    - Saint Ignatius ($34.6)
    - Sacred Heart ($60k) 
    - Jewish Community School ($65k)

I might have missed some in here since I'm going by names, but given that SF Christian is the cheapest private high school on SF Chronicle's list[1] I don't think that matters for my point.

You started this thread with average cost per student across all SF public school students, which includes special needs, high school, etc, but move to median prices for debate, and structure most of your argument around the cheapest schools (K-8). Mea culpa on my end, though: you are correct that when I was saying "cheapest I've seen," there was an unfair modifier of "cheapest schools on my personal spreadsheet" which is limited to schools within a reasonable commute and that we'd be willing to send our kids to. You're absolutely correct that there are cheaper parochial schools available as long as you only need K-8.

Using averages for private schools, which feels more applicable to your starting premise, private schools in SF average $27k, $28k, and $52k, for elementary, middle, and high school (again, referencing SF Chronicle's data). I still feel comfortable with my original premise that averaging $28k per student across all of SFUSD students is not an absurd number.

    So looking at the sticker prices (which I've listed above) may give an inflated view of total income.

Sure, that's fair! But we're not talking about income, we're talking about average cost per kid. We can't actually know the details under the hood, but again, those schools specifically in your list are usually subsidized by a larger religious organization, so the sticker price doesn't truly reflect that cost anyway.

[1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2025/sf-bay-area-privat...

▲ rahimnathwani 3 hours ago | parent [-]

  You started this thread with average cost per student across all SF public school students, which includes special needs, high school, etc, but move to median prices for debate

The reason for this is simple and not nefarious:

- I don't have access to data that would allow me to apportion total SFUSD costs to individual school types

- When considering schools with vastly different prices (and different scales), the median is a much more informative measure than the mean (which could be skewed by an unusually expensive or inexpensive school with a tiny student population).

Another reason for using median is that I was responding to your comments which talked about general price levels ('tuition for those schools is roughly', 'usually start in the $40k range'). You were not talking about averages, but typical prices or minimum (starting) prices. The mean prices have no bearing on the truth or falsity of those claims.

  Using averages for private schools, which feels more applicable to your starting premise, private high schools in SF average $27k, $28k, and $52k, for elementary, middle, and high school

If we look only at non-parochial schools, the means are even higher (e.g. $39k for 5th grade, $41k for 8th grade, $59k for 12th grade).

  those schools specifically in your list are subsidized by a larger religious organization, so the sticker price doesn't truly reflect that cost anyway

Sorry, I should have been clearer. I meant when we look at the sticker price for non-parochial schools, we should assume their average revenue per student is less than the sticker price, and the average cost per student is less than or equal to the average revenue per student.

  I still feel comfortable with my original premise that averaging $28k per student across all of SFUSD students is not an absurd number.

My original point in this subthread was that SFUSD is NOT underfunded. Do you believe it IS underfunded?

  which is limited to schools within a reasonable commute and that we'd be willing to send our kids to

If we limit the discussion to only those schools we'd be willing to send our kids to, then that would rule out almost all SFUSD schools, which kind of defeats the point of the discussion!

BTW In case you want to see the SF Chronicle data in a form that's more personalized (showing the schools nearest to you first, filterable by grade levels and price and type), I made a tool to do that: https://tools.encona.com/schoolfinder

▲ mmcclure 2 hours ago | parent [-]

    My original point in this subthread was that SFUSD is NOT underfunded. Do you believe it IS underfunded?

Your original point was not that it's "not underfunded," it was that it's overfunded (and substantially so, based on other comments). Your top(ish) comment on this thread to the $28k per student average:

    I'm saying it's a lot.

My only argument here is that I don't think $28k is unreasonable, particularly when viewed against the cost of private alternatives.

    then that would rule out almost all SFUSD schools, which kind of defeats the point of the discussion!

We go to our attendance area SFUSD school and love it. There are plenty of SFUSD and private schools that would not be on our list, be it for academic reasons or logistical.

    I made a tool to do that

Cool, I dig it! Annoying, unsolicited feature request would be to allow addresses or zip codes rather than requiring geolocation :)

	▲	rahimnathwani an hour ago \| parent [-]
		`Your original point was not that it's "not underfunded," it was that it's overfunded` Here's my original comment. I didn't say it was overfunded: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46007623 (But I do think it's overfunded.) `My only argument here is that I don't think $28k is unreasonable, particularly when viewed against the cost of private alternatives.` OK, so we agree SFUSD is not underfunded? `We go to our attendance area SFUSD school and love it.` That's great! At my attendance area school, two thirds of students are behind grade level in math, and there's no opportunity to be grouped with kids in other grades. `Annoying, unsolicited feature request would be to allow addresses or zip codes rather than requiring geolocation :)` If this is for privacy, don't worry, it's all front end code and your location isn't sent to the server. (You can check the network tab or just look at the code.)

▲ zaphar 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If the religious institution does a better job at roughly the same cost-point then it's probably not the money that is making the difference.

▲

lazyasciiart 4 hours ago | parent [-]

No, it’s the selection process of parents and children.

▲

mmcclure 3 hours ago | parent [-]

And, it's worth noting, the uh...deselection process. Private schools can kick kids out, public schools cannot.

	▲	rahimnathwani 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Public schools can't legally kick kids out, but SFUSD has shown it can drive parents away.

▲ triceratops 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

$28k doesn't go as far in San Francisco because of the insane cost of housing and everything else.

▲ SauntSolaire 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

How does housing cost affect the cost for a school to educate a student? Are you saying it's the cost of paying for the school's real-estate?

▲ darth_avocado 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

San Francisco schooling district spends upwards of $1B a year to educate 55k students. About 85% of the budget goes to salary and benefits (excluding pensions). Of that, 75% goes to educators and the rest for other staff.

Cost of living is the primary driver for cost of education everywhere.

▲ connicpu 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It affects the minimum viable salary for a teacher to even be able to live in the city where you want to hire them to work, same for all the other support staff that make a school function.

▲ michaelt 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

With a budget of $28k per student, and 21 students per classroom, that’s $588k per classroom.

Now, granted, some of that goes on building upkeep, cleaning, supplies, heating, pensions, managers etc - but if $588k per classroom doesn’t let you pay enough to attract teachers there’s something very suspicious going on.

	▲	rahimnathwani 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		`there’s something very suspicious going on` Yup! SFUSD has ~9,000 government employees, and only ~50,000 kids.

▲ oceanplexian 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I don’t buy that argument, there’s no reason a teacher in San Francisco can’t live in Oakland or Berkeley, or a teacher in NYC couldn’t live in NJ. You don’t have a human right to live in the most expensive real estate on Earth.

	▲	mynameisash 7 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		GP didn't say anything about it being a human right. You seem to be strawmanning their argument. I think it's a reasonable expectation that even in HCOL places like SF or NYC, people in careers important to society should be able to live in the communities they serve.
	▲	BobaFloutist 6 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		The price of SF real estate affects the price of real estate in Oakland and Berkeley. So it's still a relevant input variable.
	▲	joshstrange 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Yeah, screw the teachers, they should just have a longer commute, who cares about them? /s I always want to laugh when I hear people complain about finding near-minimum-wage workers in a HCOL area. They can't seem to grasp that commuting is not free, it may feel free to them at their income level but transportation costs money (gas, car maintenance, insurance or bus, etc) and time. I'm not saying teaching is a minimum wage job but it's not a high earning one either, paying them as low as we do _and_ also asking them to have a longer commute is just absurd.
	▲	FireBeyond 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Keep that argument going. Jackson Hole residents complaining about "poor service" in stores and restaurants in town, because shocker, servers can't afford to live in Jackson Hole. And unlike even SF or NY (which may not be perfect but have at least functional transport), there's no easy way to travel from the next town, an hour away or more. Residents have started banding together to rent coaches to bus people in, which seems the most reasonable solution, after all, no poors in town, still, and it doesn't hurt the residents that service industry employees in their town have a three hour commute. /s It got so bad in Atherton, CA, that the school had to build accommodation for teachers in the school itself. Next step, they can do janitorial work for extra money!

▲ ToValueFunfetti 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

High housing cost means teachers need higher salaries to account for either their higher cost of living or the extra commute

▲ 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]

▲ bluecalm 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If an average class has 20 students it's $560k per year. If an average student gets 1000 hours of schooling per year you can pay 200$/hour and you have spent only just above 1/3 of your budget.

It feels like there is more to the story that "$28k doesn't go as far in San Francisco".

▲ a2tech 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It’s because this is a very simplified view of a classroom. What is presented above is the best case scenario, not a realistic one. For example, there’s no consideration of costs associated with any sort of handicapped student, or student with special education needs.

Real world costs completely spiral out of control when you look at the actual system—for example, the buildings are all built during the rapid expansion of the country so are now old enough to need expensive maintenance, and there isn’t money or interest from the community to tear them down and build new ones.

Also something else that isn’t being covered is that involved parents are pulling their kids out for home schooling, and well behaved kids are increasingly being pulled out and put in charter sschools. This is leading to a rapid collapse of the school system. Public school is being left as a place for students who’s parents don’t care enough to do anything with them, or with enough behavioral or special needs that charter schools won’t handle them.

	▲	rahimnathwani 6 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		`there isn’t money or interest from the community to tear them down and build new ones` San Francisco voters have repeatedly voted to borrow massive sums of money to fund SFUSD capital improvements: https://www.sfusd.edu/bond/overview The most recent $790,000,000 in 2024.
	▲	michaelt 6 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> the buildings are all built during the rapid expansion of the country so are now old enough to need expensive maintenance What kind of maintenance do you think is expensive compared to a budget of $560k per room, per year?

▲ triceratops 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Very possibly. All I'm saying is you can't just compare dollar figures per student without considering where the dollars are spent.

▲ whoaoweird 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

▲ rahimnathwani 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

$28k per student is more than enough to run a school in San Francisco. Let's assume we cannot take advantage of the economies of scale available to SFUSD, and we're running a school with just one classroom: 22 7th graders. That would cost SFUSD $616k ($28k x 22). What would it cost us?

  Teacher (all-in cost):                            $150k
  Teaching assistant:                               $100k
  Rent for commercial space in SF (~1,200 sq ft):    $60k
  Curriculum, books, supplies:                       $23k
  Technology (22 Chromebooks, projector, software):  $18k
  Field trips and enrichment:                        $10k
  Utilities, internet, insurance:                    $27k
  Furniture and equipment:                           $20k
  Admin/legal/accounting:                             $8k
  
  Total:                                            $416k

That leaves $200k unspent.

AND ... these numbers are deliberately conservative. Teachers work ~40 weeks per year, not 52, so the $150k all-in is really $3,750/week - very competitive for SF. The $18k technology budget assumes replacing every Chromebook annually, but they last 3-5 years, so amortized cost is more like $5k/year. The rent estimate of $5k/month assumes market-rate commercial space, but you could find cheaper options in underutilized buildings or negotiate with a church/community center. Furniture lasts decades, not one year. The $1k per student for curriculum and supplies is also high - you're not buying new textbooks every year, and open-source curricula exist.

If you were trying to minimize costs rather than be conservative, you could probably run this one room school house for $350k/year ($16k/student/year).

▲ brettcvz 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The big thing you’re missing is special education, and to a lesser extent English Language Learners. School districts are obligated to teach every student, some of whom cost the district dramatically more than they receive from the state.

Your admin costs are also low - you need to account for each teacher being coached and managed, running school operations and front desk, facilities management, finance, IT, etc.

▲ brettcvz 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Also this is an area where first principles analysis is likely to lead you astray - I’d recommend starting with SFUSD’s public budget to understand what their cost structure is.

▲

rahimnathwani 4 hours ago | parent [-]

You're recommending I look at SFUSD's public budget when:

- that budget is how I was able to calculate per-pupil spend

- in another comment you admitted to having 'no idea' where the $28k/year number came from, suggesting to me that you haven't looked at the budget yourself

The granularity in SFUSD's published budget is not sufficient to analyze what is useful and what is waste.

	▲	brettcvz 29 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I did some research into this - the public budget is actually reasonably detailed. The biggest gap between your analysis and the actual expenditures are the SFUSD faces much higher facilities costs, higher admin cost due to Teacher coaching, and specialized programs for English language learners and special education

▲ brettcvz 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Finally, I have no idea where people are getting $28k/year; most schools in CA operate on closer to $14k-$16k per pupil

	▲	rahimnathwani 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		To get the number, you just need to divide two numbers: SFUSD's budget and the number of students. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41711345

▲ jorts 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

As the son of a teacher and a friend of several teachers, you're way underestimating their workload.

▲ rahimnathwani 6 hours ago | parent [-]

I estimated that a class of 22 children would require one full time teacher and one full time teaching assistant.

What am I missing? My table has $200k left over so we could add another full time teacher at $150k?

▲ lazyasciiart 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Any specialized teaching: art, languages, in high school I understand they have a different teacher for each subject, a librarian, a substitute teacher on sick days, an individual aide for one of the kids to represent the special education budget…

But I remember you previously and you appear to want a school system that spends money on exactly what your child needs and nothing else.

	▲	rahimnathwani 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		`you appear to want a school system that spends money on exactly what your child needs and nothing else.` Providing for my child's educational needs is my job as a parent, not the job of the government 'school system'. But if the government is going to operate schools and demand that we all pay for those schools, I'd prefer it if those schools were run for the benefit of students (and specifically to maximize academic achievement) and not for the benefit of government employees.

▲ Izikiel43 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

In WA the state spends around 20k$ per student, people still say it's underfunded.

▲ joshstrange 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Education is expensive and underfunded.

Always makes me think of The West Wing scene:

> Education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don't need little changes, we need gigantic, monumental changes. Schools should be palaces. The competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should be making six-figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge to its citizens, just like national defense. That's my position. I just haven't figured out how to do it yet.

Video (sorry for the burned in subs, should be queued up): https://youtu.be/IzV09gESyh0?t=39

▲ nradov 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Education should be well funded but in many school districts the problem is waste and inefficiency rather than lack of funding. Huge amounts are paid to administrators and consultants who do nothing to improve student outcomes, or even make them worse. Generally there is little correlation between funding per student and results.