My older son had one teacher who would start the class by telling the students what chapters in the book to read during the class period. The teacher would then go to the teacher's lounge or outside if the weather was good and relax and smoke until the class was over. In middle school my younger son had a physical education teacher who gave the students tests of physical condition, devised a series of exercises to improve their condition and then periodically retested them for improvement. In high school it seems that they go to the gym in physical education class and then either play basketball or sit on the benches at their option until the class is over. Sometimes other classes are spent watching current popular videos, having pizza parties, watching baseball and basketball tournaments on TV and in one case they spent a few days assembling parent information packets for the office staff.
Classes sometimes have to be missed for PEP rallies for the basketball team.
The school system's total budget increased from about 5.5 million dollars in 1989 to 7.8 million dollars this year. To do so they eliminated 18 teacher's positions, elimated the alternate school, eliminated advanced placement classes at the high school and raised taxes, among other measures. They kept the worst teachers as well as many good and mediocre teachers. My youngest son, the high school sophomore, is a straight A student in spite of the fact that he has never read a book more than 150 pages in length and very few of those, has never learned the principles of good writing and has very little interest in either reading or writing. He is extremely bored in school and feels no motivation to learn or challenge in his classes.