Officials say six employees of New York City’s public school system took their children or grandchildren on trips to Disney World, New Orleans and other locations using tickets that were meant for homeless students.
Homeless kids deserve childhoods too, but can’t help thinking there must be higher priority items than sending them to Disney. A tragedy of this story is maybe those grants wouldn’t have been diverted and could have been stretched further had they been spent on more useful things.
There is always going to be "higher priority" to spend that money on. But they got it for this so let them just use it to make kids happy and not try and say that it's not the "useful things" to spend it on.
Most of the cost is likely written off by the companies providing tickets and travel, possibly even the hotel. So really this is probably just a Disney+airlines partner up for a charity that costs the schools a minimal amount (travel+ticket for chaperones, 1 per 10 children.)
It gives kids who basically have no childhood a way to actually feel like a kid. That’s still very important. Especially when we waste much more money on things that we convince ourselves are better, that are very often useless.
I agree that logically there are higher priorities, a child's development isn't completely logical. I think allowing them to participate in the same activities as their peers is important. Stuff we might think is dumb as adults can have a big impact on kids, and homeless kids are already at a disadvantage as far as fitting in.