Justice Isn’t Equal: What Kids’ Cartoons Can Teach Us About School Budgets

NOTE: This article was written in the voice of Bandit Heeler, a character on the kids show Bluey. If you miss some references, it might be time to do some volunteer childcare and learn the culture.

If you’ve ever tried dividing food between kids, you know fairness isn’t everyone getting the same thing. It’s everyone getting what they need, mate. That’s Parenting 101. It’s also Budgeting 101 – though the district’s Standard of Care (SOC) framework seems to ignore this.

On paper, the SOC sounds reasonable: standardize supports, set staffing ratios, and create consistency across schools. In practice, it is equality mislabeled as equity – it’s the same rules, across different school realities, and a hopeful assumption that this uniformity will produce fairness.

It won’t. Not in my house, and not in our schools.

Take the proposed ratio of one assistant principal per 350 students. Clean. Simple. Spreadsheet-friendly. It’s also completely indifferent to whether a school is managing high special education needs, large multilingual learner populations, or complex programs like Montessori or arts academies that have specialized requirements.

That’s like saying every kid gets the same size shoe because it’s fair. Sure – until someone starts limping.

Meanwhile, while schools are told to tighten belts and standardize staffing, the district maintains some of the highest-paid central office administrators in the country. Cabinet-level staff sit comfortably far from classrooms. Which is fine – until “tightening resources” only seems to apply in one direction. Those shoes are roomy in the Superintendent’s cabinet!

I watch a lot of cartoons these days in my role as a cool dad and there’s some great lessons in these shows. A classic SpongeBob SquarePants episode –“Born Again Krabs” – highlights this leadership failure. In it, the ever penny-pinching Mr. Krabs trades SpongeBob’s soul to the ghostly Flying Dutchman for a mere 62 cents after a series of comically trivial negotiations. Yes, 62 cents. The exchange is played for laughs, but it underscores just how casually a loyal, hardworking employee can be undervalued when profit becomes the sole priority. Almost immediately, Mr. Krabs realizes his mistake. Without SpongeBob – the heart and engine of the Krusty Krab – business falters, and guilt sets in. Desperate to make things right, he attempts to buy SpongeBob back, only to discover that repairing the damage to trust and morale is far more complicated than the original transaction.

He eventually succeeds, but not without embarrassment and consequence, reinforcing the episode’s central message: When leadership prioritizes short-term gain over the people who make the system work, morale, trust, and common sense all go in the litter box.

Bluey’s “Fairies” offers the other half of the lesson (P.S. you’ll need a subscription to a streaming service to see the whole episode). In the episode, Bingo feels hurt after I brush her off during a busy moment – no worries, I make up for it later. Soon after, strange disruptions appear around the house: chairs stacked in odd places, objects rearranged, and notes suggesting mischievous fairies are at work. The family scrambles to solve the mystery.

But the problem isn’t fairies – it’s my inattention to details that matters. Bingo’s feelings have been overlooked. Once I slow down, listen, and reconnect, the chaos disappears. The fairies were never the cause of the chaos – they were just a signal that something important had been missed.

That’s the central issue with a strictly standardized staffing model. A one-size-fits-all approach may appear fair because it is consistent. But consistency alone cannot respond to variation in need. Schools are not interchangeable – they serve different populations, operate specialized programs, and face distinct challenges. Treating them as identical risks obscuring the very inequities the system claims to address. And the Superintendent is seeing what happens when the voices of important stakeholders are ignored – FAIRIES!

The district’s reliance on “critical needs” requests only deepens the concern. In theory, schools can seek additional support. In practice, equity becomes reactive – a contest to see who can ask best, justify hardest, and wait the longest without breaking. It’s The Hunger Games: Districts of Need.

That’s not a system designed for kids. Or teachers. Or staff. Or families. That’s a system designed for an administration that cares most about spreadsheets. 

No one is saying budgets aren’t real or tradeoffs aren’t necessary. They are. But justice still doesn’t come from sameness. It means recognizing that Montessori schools operate differently from traditional campuses, that arts programs require specialized staffing, and that schools serving higher-need populations require additional administrative and instructional support. It also means aligning financial priorities with classroom realities – not preserving executive compensation while standardizing scarcity at the school level.

Back at my house, when the kids argue about what’s fair, I remind them of something simple: justice isn’t about giving everyone the same thing. It’s about making sure everyone has what they need to succeed.

And that’s good public policy, too.