Then it's not enough to say it, show the numbers. Considering the tiny demographic it serves, I'd imagine the cuts on the basis of inequality are a convenient excuse to slash spending, and not increase it otherwise.
There's no relationship between gutting gifted programs and either alleviating inequality or improving outcomes of all other students. If you want to do the latter, that requires it's own intervention.
This basically apes the rhetoric of the right-wing on the part of social spending. "We can't afford it, it should be spent on other things". Same mentality.
There's absolutely nothing in there about the cost of those programs, which is why you didn't bother to quote it. What there is: talk about under-representation in those programs. That's it.
It's puzzling why you won't lend credence to an important factor: poverty has cognitive consequences. Yet rather than trying to improve the lot of those students, you're fixated on taking things away. This is how socialists think: some people have it too good and need to be punished.
I am saying that. "Gifted" programs and the schools that house them eat up a sizable chunk of funding.