For a long time, my town very very very stubbornly voted against tax overrides for more school money. As a result, I went to high school in a building that was built in the 1930s---well, there was also a building from the time of open classrooms that only had some partitions added on. I don't know about the teachers' salaries. The school mostly got away with being the way it was because a science teacher did some award-winning research on vernal pools, but I can tell you that every other subject suffered.

tl;dr I live in a liberal state but a conservative town and I am bitter.

Ya, but. Calculus. That's school again :( Going to school for nothing but school is too depressing.