I think underfunding may actually be good for a school. That's because I went to a small, poorly funded school in a small, working-class town. We had competitions in everything from football to spelling. The other school against which we competed, year after year, was a small, poorly funded school in a small, working-class town, hundreds of miles away. I had no idea how many other schools existed in our state.
There were years when a state-level competition would feature some other rival school besides Martinsville, but in our size category it really was Gate City vs. Martinsville, in some competition or other, year after year. Better funded schools just didn't make it to the final cut. There'd be one year when we heard that some school like Gretna or Pocahontas existed, and then nobody ever heard from them again--if we were successful in next year's competition, it would involve Martinsville. Again.
How many times we heard: "This other school has more nice stuff than we have...but we do more with less."
This is still going on, I might add. Gate City continues to rack up state championships. I've seen locally printed T-shirts that describe winning the championships as "tradition" or "The Gate City Way." I only wish the welfare system hadn't given our older generation a way of living that made it seem so bitterly ironic to describe good, hard, fair work as "The Gate City Way"...
Teachers need to give up the misbelief that schools need more and more money. Yes, more classroom gimmicks and gadgets would be fun. Yes, higher salaries for teachers would be nice. But when the economy is tight, teachers need to believe completely in the truth of "We don't need the goodies they have. We can do more with less than they can." If teachers, parents, and students believe this, it will be true.
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