I distinctly remember our school district getting funding cut while I was in High School as some kind of "Robin Hood" scenario to help fund schools in poorer neighborhoods. I'll have to look into it and report back. katakowsj - do you remember this circa 1990?
Here in Michigan we have an even more insane system than most places. As part of a conservative wet dream to defund public schools, they passed a law in the early 90s (called proposal A) that made it so each school got the same amount per student from the state and local property taxes were no longer used for schools (which sounds good in theory but their idea was to bring down the good schools, not bring up the bad ones). But the catch is that property taxes were only prohibited for operations and not for capital improvements. This made it so (A) suburbs could still have all the tech and nice sports facilities they wanted, but without (B) having the ability to pay teachers as much as an individual district thought they deserved, since that an operating expense and was now dictated at least in part by the state. It also made sure that class sizes would be large even in rich districts with the hope that people would jump ship for private schools. It was definitely a case of the cure being worse than the disease. I'm not sure there's a better solution within the current structure than busing, which worked in some areas when tried and not so much in others, I gather.
One of the disappointments I had with her on the campaign was that she appeared to back away from several of her good ideas in favor of democratic orthodoxy. You can't change a system that entrenched without pissing a bunch of people off, but that's what leadership is.