In most towns, education is a huge chunk of the budget. In my semi-rural Massachusetts town of about 7,000, 62% of the budget goes to the town's elementary school and its share of the regional high school. Public works is only about 8% and public safely is a bit under twice that.

As far as I know that's pretty common--in fact, I expected the educational spend to be higher, which it probably is in some places. (Per student spend for the regional high school is about half the spending in Cambridge for example.)