Underfunded?
Lol... the entire educational system needs an overhaul.
Throwing more money into the existing system won't solve anything.
If I was in his positions, I'd urge for an overhaul of the educational system that eliminated competition, grades and industrial type education - replacing it with FULL cooperation, interactive classes (gamification style - Khan Academy comes to mind), exposure to relevant general education (all subject relating to man), prompting critical thinking in students of ALL ages, encouraging everyone to be problem solvers, etc.
Second graders can easily be taught complex mathematics and sciences.
The reason we don't do this today is due to the moronic notion of 'the child is too young to understand'.
They are human. Ergo, in order to understand something/anything, they require exposure to relevant education (it won't pop into their skulls from nowhere after all).