The system broken, the school is closed, the prison's open  from
Kanye West (Ft. Dwele) – Power Lyrics on Rap Genius   Kanye
likes to preach. This time he has a point though: whenever
there’s a budget shortfall, school budgets get hit first, prison
budgets get hit last. The government keeps closing down schools,
but keeps plenty of prisons open. So when the lower-class kids
grow up to be “criminals” from a lack of good schooling, or even
schools worth going to because the schools they did leave open
now have 500 kids per classroom, they blame it on the troubled
youth. When, as he says, the system is broken. If they would do
things right, keep schools open and teach our kids, less of them
would grow up to fill their prisons, and would have less use for
them.  A slightly different grammatical take on the lyrics
produces a more general sentiment: “the school is closed, the
prisons open.”  There are rare cases where both get blasted,
though: see present-day California  To help improve the meaning
of these lyrics,