Of the many problems that poorly funded public schools face, few are as damaging as the schools’ short-sighted financial and educational priorities. In many schools, the thought of investing extra money into the teacher pool is seen as a waste of precious resources and the money is instead used to maintain the pool of substitute and tenured teachers. Due to this practice, many young and enthusiastic teachers are not hired or retained by these public schools, and they are crowded out by the cheaper substitute teachers and tenured teachers. The negative effects of this is tremendous; since the best and brightest instructors are excluded from the system, the school makes do with teachers who are unwilling or unable to make a meaningful difference in the students’ education. In Jonathan Kozol’s book, Savage Inequalities, he explores the nature of these schools’ inadequate staff when a teacher observes that “The school board thinks that it is saving money on the subs. I tell them, ‘Pay now or pay later’” (63). By the schools unwillingness to invest the funds available into quality teachers, the performance of the school as a whole suffers. Without good teachers to make a meaningful difference in the students’ lives, the money that is saved on sub-par teachers will be insignificant compared to the human capital wasted in a failing school.