hi, public school worker here..it is not only legal but encouraged for districts to buy furniture, air filters, and other goods from prison labor sources. one year we even had a group of convicts come to paint the walls, they did a horrible job and people ended up with stolen money also. it blows my mind that this is acceptable.

And that argument would matter if the goal were to improve the state of the budget. But it's irrelevant to the share holders in the private prison/slavery corporations and the politicians those corporations lobby/bribe. And that last group have the power to keep slavery going.

So you're saying they should have started using child prison labour decades ago?

Tho I guess that's contingent on if there will be a net return from the smaller cells & rations against the lowered productivity.