Is Google's Non-Tax Based Public School Funding Cause For Celebration?

theodp (442580) writes "Google's "flash-funding" of teachers' projects via DonorsChoose continues to draw kudos from grateful mayors of the nation's largest cities. The latest comes from Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto (fresh from a Google-paid stay at the Google Zeitgeist resort), who joined Google officials at Taylor Allderdice HS, where Google announced it was 'flash funding' all Pittsburgh area teachers' crowd-funding campaigns on DonorsChoose.org. DonorsChoose reports that Google spent $64,657 to fund projects for 10,924 Pittsburgh kids. While the not-quite-$6-a-student is nice, it does pale by comparison to the $56,742 Google is ponying up to send one L.A. teacher's 34 students to London and Paris and the $35,858 it's spending to take another L.A. teacher's 52 kids to NYC, Gettysburg, and DC. So, is Google's non-tax based public school funding — which includes gender-based funding as well as "begfunding" — cause for celebration?"

Comments

gender-based funding

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that the newspeak for golddigging?

Non Tax Based?!?

[Bob9113]

So, is Google's non-tax based public school funding

They pay billions in profits to an empty office in the Carribbean so they don't have to pay taxes, and give a small portion of that money back through school funding, and take that as a tax deduction.

In the process, they get enormous influence over the educational agenda. It is largely in a direction Slashdotters can agree with, but imagine it was a church doing this.

Like Al Capone giving some of his money to the Chicago slums, it may be better than if they weren't doing it, but it hardly gets Google out of the crooked, lobbying megacorp set.