Preventing a city from becoming a giant old age home

James Taranto, in the OpinionJournal, points out that a recent report shows that San Francisco is losing its children, and that one of its initiatives is to try to beef up the public school system. To Taranto, this is entirely illogical:

So the lack of children is a reason to spend more taxpayer money on schools and other programs for kids. If there were more kids, would that be a reason to spend less?

It's actually a little less illogical than it appears. Aside from obscenely high housing costs, which simply forces committed urbanites to live in smaller homes than the suburbs would offer, the main reason people I know are leaving SF is that the schools are dreadful. Better schools actually would keep families within the City. So, if the City genuinely wants to look like a real community, and not like a retirement community, it's not so silly to spend money on schools. My complaint would be that the spending all sounds entirely cosmetic. Nothing will change the kind of NEA driven, dull, PC pap being fed through force of repetition into these poor children -- but, of course, that complaint can be applied to all public schooling, no matter how fancy the facility in which it's placed.