Scrutinizing where Malia and Chelsea and Amy went to school as first kids is a reminder that even presidents face the kinds of decisions that everyday parents have to make in an increasingly heterogenous school landscape. Perhaps more importantly, though, it’s a reminder of the disconnect that often separates public-school classrooms from the people who decide what happens in them: Given how much power the president of the United States wields over the nation’s public schools, it’s noteworthy how few of the country’s soon-to-be 45 commanders-in-chief actually had real, personal stakes in the public-education systems they helped—or will soon help—shape.

I was thinking about the implications of this disconnect the other day after reading an article in The 74 that recounted a visit that the Republican presidential nominee made to New York City’s P.S. 70 in the late 1990s. Donald Trump—whose five children all attend(ed) private schools—was invited to the public school as part of a New York nonprofit’s “Principal for a Day” program. After arriving in a limousine, Trump reportedly offered to buy a select group of children Nike sneakers and used a tissue to protect his hand from making contact with the school stairwell railing. Before he left, just two hours later, he allegedly presented the school with a fake $2 million check, later taking it back and giving it only $200. These are just a few of Trump’s various faux pas recalled by people who witnessed the visit.

“The thing that it really left me with was that this man had absolutely no clue about education,” David MacEnulty, who ran P.S. 70’s chess program at the time, told The 74. “He certainly had no clue where he was and who he was working with, and I just got the impression that this is a guy who shoots from the hip and whatever’s on his mind at the moment is what’s going to come out. I’d like for somebody to be a little more thoughtful.” (A spokeswoman for the Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.)

Trump hardly serves as a typical example of how that disconnect manifests itself in (aspiring) politicians, but the anecdote does demonstrate that public education isn’t something one can fix or improve or influence by throwing money at it and showing face. Rather, fixing and improving and influencing public education requires insight into and experience with public education—the kind of raw understanding that’s part and parcel of being a public-school teacher, a public-school student, a public-school parent.

“It can be difficult to understand the real needs of public schools when you are disconnected from [them],” said Catherine Cushinberry, the executive director of the advocacy group Parents for Public Schools, which was founded in the early 1990s in response to the “white flight” that was afflicting Mississippi’s public-school districts. “For many folks, the belief is that you need to be in the system to understand the system, and to impact change within the system.”