May 6, 2008 11:09AM # I Thought the Schools Were Starving? By [Neal McCluskey](https://www.cato.org/people/neal-mccluskey) --- SHARE Everyone knows that our public schools are underfunded, right? So why do they keep blowing easy money? You might recall that last week the Miami-Dade School District [turned down ](https://www.cato.org/2008/04/30/bureaucracy-at-work/)a principal’s offer to work for a single dollar on the grounds that the district would have to put his salary in the budget anyway. Good bye, $119,999! Today, *The Seattle Times* reports that the state of Washington is forfeiting a [$13.2 million grant ](http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/education/2004394554_grants06m.html)for Advanced Placement teachers because the people running the grant program want to pay teachers directly for participating in their training. The problem? “Washington’s collective-bargaining laws require that teacher pay be negotiated between unions and school districts.” Our public schools, no matter what bureaucrats and unions tell us, [are not underfunded](http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=13542). If they were, though, the whiners would largely have themselves to blame. ##### Related Tags [Education](https://www.cato.org/education), [Center for Educational Freedom](https://www.cato.org/center-educational-freedom) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).