Interesting post. What is more important to us than our children's well-being? Nothing.
I live in NY state (USA). In my area, public school is funded by local real estate taxes. This makes for a rather inequitable educational offering for the kids. Districts with a poor tax base cannot afford to offer the same things as districts with a healthier tax base. If you look at a map of the different communities in my area, real estate values tend to correspond closely to school district boundaries.
Students from one district may not cross over into another. If they do, they get charged what is assessed as the cost of that education, which in my children's school district was $35,000+ a year.