Public Schools Without Textbooks?

Call me crazy, but I thought one of the fundamental expectations for students that attended a public school was that they would be issued textbooks for their subjects.

I recently heard from a few homeschool moms on a forum who had friends and family who taught in public schools where there wasn't enough funding to issue textbooks. A couple of the teachers were simply pulling stuff off the internet so the students would have some sort of take-home resource. Others had classrooms with a "classroom" set of books that the students weren't allowed to take home. How on earth do they learn how to study if the only time they can use the books is during a class period with all the chaos and racket that ensues therein?

One other mentioned that her husband's class allowed half the students to have a textbook for whatever subject he was teaching (history?) for one semester and the rest of the class could use a copy the second semester.

So, where is all the money going? Isn't the whole purpose of the government education system supposed to be educating the child and in a public school setting aren't textbooks the main conveyance of information outside of teacher lectures? Don't answer that. We know what the real underlying agenda is, but this is the highly promoted, assumed agenda--education.

It's been so long since I attended a school but I thought issuing and reading textbooks was a no-brainer.