Well, no, actually, I didn't snip that part because "it doesn't fit your perception of who you think I am". I snipped it because I was specifically addressing the idea that 1) a high eligibility listing for the Federal School Lunch program means that there are a high percentage of economically disadvantaged children attending that school, and 2) that the presence of a high percentage of economically disadvantaged students in a school is reliable evidence that that school is itself economically disadvantaged, because they are spending a high percentage of money on food instead of educational resources. FWIW, I don't happen to have ANY perception of who you are, other than someone who is mistaken about how the Federal School Lunch program actually works.
The truth is that in areas where a school (or more importantly, the district as a whole) does not qualify to participate in the Community Eligibility Provision Program, then the ENTIRE cost of the lunches for those kids who qualify are paid by the Federal Government, out of funding from the U S Dept. of Agriculture (NOT from the US Dept. of Education.) However, for schools (or districts) that do qualify to participate in the Community Eligibility Provision, the cost of the food for the program must be partially borne by state or local government if it exceeds the Federal reimbursement rate. So, my district does spend some of their money on food for the program, but only because they chose NOT to spend that same bucket of money on hiring additional administrative staff to process individual applications. Because the applications for the program are mandated for distribution, every school in the country that doesn't have a large percentage of qualified kids is actually wasting a higher percentage of money on it relative to what they gain, because of the administrative cost of processing thousands of applications that will not qualify. It's an apples vs. oranges kind of thing; a lot of local money still gets spent on the program one way or another, especially once you factor in employee benefits, which are traditionally a pretty high cost in public school systems. (An intangible benefit is that in schools where the whole district qualifies, no kid bears an unfair stigma of being "on free lunch.")
And yes, this magnet school is far and away a better school than most of the "regular" schools in the district, but again, evidence shows that the primary reason for that is that the students who are there have chosen to be there, and had to go to quite a lot of effort to get there. That process makes families very invested, but there are other ways that that can happen; for instance, I know of a school in a poorly-rated district in Florida that has better-than-average scores and phenomenal rates of parental involvement, largely because the Principal chooses to use her summer to make a personal visit to the home of each and every school family, speaking Spanish if necessary. You can't buy that kind of dedication.
The ability of a school to provide certain resources is almost always most directly indicative not of how much money they have, but of how they choose to spend it, or often, how they choose to spend the time they have for planning what to spend money on and how to get it. We are presently dealing with this issue at the middle school my DD is slated to attend next year. At the Prospective Parents meeting, the Principal of that school went on at great length about how excited he was that they had been able to raise money for a very large flagpole last year, one that can support a very large American flag that now waves over the school (the flag was donated, but they had to buy a flagpole in order to be able to display it.) While they didn't spend District money on it, it concerns me, because if this clown is that happy to have raised and then wasted money on a giant flagpole, what other pricey symbolic boondoggle is he likely to get obsessed with at the expense of the job that he is truly supposed to be doing?
