But a healthy community cannot guarantee a good school. Money must be involved. Teachers must be paid, rooms must be heated, students must be fed.

The school system in which my mother works receives a theoretically appropriate amount of money to meet their budget from the state. Unfortunately, this money comes with such strictures that it cannot be spent in an effective manner.

Think of it as the state giving the schools money to buy new buses, but takes away the money to pay drivers. Plenty of pizza for lunch, no oven to cook it in. Money to build a new athletic complex while math teachers get laid off.

Not every school needs a new building or repairs, admittedly; but as school funding in many cases is largely a function of property values, the collapse of the housing bubble will have some lingering effects that could be alleviated somewhat through stimulus.

The education system is something that needs addressing separately from the infrastructure aspect of it. Based on what I’ve seen over the past couple of days, it appears that education reform is likely to be Michelle Obama’s priority. Which is excellent, I think. Schools and education problems are one of the main driving forces of suburban blight, and efforts to fix the problem could make great strides in bringing cities together, instead of having them spread ever outward.