I did a writeup on public spending in Kansas, and more broadly, the idea of using sophisticated analytics to determine appropriate levels of funding for public education, and potentially other programs. There's also some past analysis that points out an interesting pay discrepancy for female and African American teachers. (Spoiler alert: they get paid less).
In the end, I suggest that the analytics profession is provided quite a bit of public spending and other data, and potentially looks at some of these problems on a pro-bono basis. I generally believe that there would be a lot of junior analysts, and other analysts if you make it a competition (everyone loves competitions) that would use their services for the greater good. Anyways, here's a link to my writeup on this idea. Any potential collaborators or people with ideas can comment or contact me directly.