This item is relevant to Math-Teach because the vast over-funding of schools is a perennial topic. Also, the underlying article may be independently interesting to correspondents.
I just encountered a fascinating publication of the FBI, cited below. At the upper right, just below the search box and the navigation headings, there is a drop-down list that allows the reader to read the article in one of at least two dozen languages. These languages include, Basque, Esperanto, Irish, Welsh, Haitian Creole, and Yiddish. Oh, and Chinese appears twice, once in traditional script and once in simplified script.
Basque, Irish, and Welsh are minority languages in their own ethnes, every single speaker of which is competent in a major world language. Haitian Creole is not the language of instruction anywhere in the world, certainly not in Haiti, except possibly for one or two schools in New York City so that it is a drop dead guarantee that any Creole speaker who wants to read the FBI article can certainly do it in French and probably in English. Yiddish is a fast-dying language, every single speaker of which is competent and almost certainly literate in a major world language. And Esperanto is spoken as a native language by nobody.
Among speakers of the minor languages, like Dutch and Romanian, etc.---really, almost all the languages on the list---the practice is not to translate world literature (especially of the non-fiction and technical kind) into their own vernaculars but to read it in one of the major world languages, mainly English. For example, I would bet money that any Romanian who might have an interst in this article, and a connection to the internet, can read it in English, easily.
And now, if you will forgive me, I must observe the obvious: it costs money to produce all these translations. Why did the FBI do it? Why did they spend a lot of money in an exercise that will benefit nobody? I am willing to be persuaded by the facts, but I will bet there is no defensible reason, and they must be stopped.
Friends, as in public education, there is only one way to stop the madness: take away their money.