I can't even count the times I've actually heard this argument from my right wing family members.

As in they actually advocate it? One of my misfeatures is that I tend to ask annoying questions of powerful people, and really pissed off the Mayor of Sunnyvale one year when they were advocating re-developing school property into commercial real estate. I think I said, "Are you saying it would be better for my children if there kids, my grandchildren, had no where to go to school but could hang out at a Target?"

That redevelopment would have been extremely reasonable if they were the mayor of Sunnydale.

Also, unless that were the only school in the area, your question may have been unproductive. The marginal value to society of a commercial installation can be greater than that of a school.

I'm going to need context for this. People will commute for hours per week to buy/rent a home in a good school district. I'm looking into school right now where homes in the neighbourhood are $1MM+. I can't afford that so I'll try and get our kid in through the special snowflake waiver.

People will spend ungodly amounts of money to move to an area with decent schools.

Here in Edinburgh (which has a very high level of kids in private school - around 25%, very unusual for the UK) a recent report suggested that it was actually cheaper to send 2 kids to private school than to relocate to an area that has a good state school.

http://www.scotsman.com/news/education/private-school-cheape...

just goes to show that there are short-sighted idiots on both sides of the political spectrum