I kind of think the status of US schools is not very well known, or at least not consistently known:
To summarize the situation. US education institutes are laying off hundreds of teachers, cancelling courses, cutting services, etc. across the board. If a teacher is hired, it is most likely for part-time, on lower wages, with fewer benefits. If a teacher is guaranteed tenure after x many years, chances are they will be laid off, and their programs cancelled before this happens. At the primary level, schools are being aggressively merged, and sometimes even closed, to save money for the school district.
At the same time administrators in said schools are ballooning, more administrators are being hired, and their pay keeps going up (while other staff pay is stagnant). If there is money being allocated to the schools, it most likely goes into administration, not education. Administration has also become a political gig. Administrators move between school systems, get higher and higher positions, fill out their resumes, and gain prestige (all the while being payed more and more). What they actually do, is anybodies guess, most of the time they are simply in the way of teacher making actual changes which would benefit students. A typical scenario is a new higher administrator comes in, wants to look important and decides to create more administrator position and hire a security contractor to impose a security theater on campus.
I guess this this what your grand-parent was talking about. And how it comes to no-ones surprise when funding for this ballooning administration costs come from the same industry which is killing us all and our climate.