It’s rare for a large fraction of grant money to be siphoned to a Dean’s discretionary fund. Typically some smallish fraction (maybe 10%, often significantly less) of indirect costs (which, depending on the funder and the negotiated F&A rate may be anywhere from 0% or nearly 100% on top of the direct costs that fund the research staff and materials, etc.) goes back to the subdivision overseen by that Dean to do with as they please. Everywhere I’ve worked, that amounts to a few (low single digit) percent of total costs being used in the way you describe. And many places return none of indirects to the unit overseeing the PI and so then it’s a cool zero percent.

> The US chronically underfunds pre-college education

Not true, US spends more on pre-college education than nearly any other country https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-exp...

>The US chronically underfunds pre-college education.

As streptomycin said, you are wrong.

New York City spends more per student than anywhere else in the US (<https://www.silive.com/news/2019/06/how-much-does-new-york-c...>). Baltimore, an incredibly poor and run-down city, spends the third most. #4-6 and #8 are all wealthy suburbs of Washington DC, but their schools are all far better than those of Baltimore or NYC on average, despite Baltimore spending slightly more per student and NYC spending 60-70% more.

Money can only do so much against dysfunctional families immersed in dysfunctional ethno-societal groups.

TL;DR In the US, primary education is a local matter

An interesting note here is that in the US, federal government dollars are not a major funding component of primary education (k-12). Less than 8% (around $60 billion) of the total cost comes from the federal government; the rest comes from state and local property taxes.

https://educationdata.org/public-education-spending-statisti...

https://www.pgpf.org/budget-basics/how-is-k-12-education-fun...