I heard an interesting interview with a charter school guy a few years ago. Even if you are against charter schools, his philosophy was interesting.

The city he lived in [[I think it was in Indiana) had just built a $30 million dollar high school. State-of-the-art, with a pool, multiple cafeterias, a coffee shop, multiple gyms, media labs, computer labs, etc...

So, he spun up his charter high school for $2 million. No cafeteria, students ate lunch in classrooms. They had hot lunches catered in - so no kitchen. No gym or pool - they rented one from the local YMCA, which was empty most weekdays. They signed a deal with a computer company and gave every student a laptop - no computer lab. For a stage they rented the local masonic hall - again, empty during weekdays.

The end result is that facilities maintenance and utility payments on the charter school were 1/10th the cost of public high school, even given rental costs. The charter school rolled all of those savings into paying for a lower student-teacher ratio, and more parapros and social workers.

Guess which school had better grades and more graduates going to college? The one that spent more on a nice building, or the one that spent more on teachers and staff that directly interacted with students?