I think you're being unfair to malek, but he's expecting nuance out of a comic strip. So, I don't know if I can defend him totally.
Anyways, my limited perspective about schools in America is that they prioritize learning tools over teachers/building maintenance. Then the teachers/administrators feel compelled to fill out budgets every year with marginally useful materials in order to keep those budgets maintained. There's a lot of waste because of this. They'd rather spend 100k on smartboards or other tech instead of hiring a new teacher or upgrading a facility.
But that's my tiny perspective in a system that has 10000 different districts and 50 different states all pulling in different directions. It makes it hard to generalize when youre talking about this frankenstein of a system that has been created over the past 70+ years.