Los Angeles Unveils $578 Million Public School

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from an Associated Press report on next month's opening of the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools in Los Angeles: "With an eye-popping price tag of $578 million, it will mark the inauguration of the nation's most expensive public school ever. The K-12 complex to house 4,200 students has raised eyebrows across the country as the creme de la creme of 'Taj Mahal' schools, $100 million-plus campuses boasting both architectural panache and deluxe amenities. ... At RFK, the features include fine art murals and a marble memorial depicting the complex's namesake, a manicured public park, and a state-of-the-art swimming pool. 'There's no more of the old, windowless cinderblock schools of the '70s where kids felt, "Oh, back to jail,"' said Joe Agron, editor-in-chief of American School & University, a school construction journal. 'Districts want a showpiece for the community, a really impressive environment for learning.' ... Critics note that nearly 3,000 teachers have been laid off over the past two years, the academic year and programs have been slashed, the district faces a $640 million shortfall and some schools persistently rank among the nation's lowest performing."

Comments

it's all about accountability

[circletimessquare]

i would be happy to pay teachers and school administrators 6 figure incomes, provided they churned out highly educated students

but i'm sorry, if a teacher sucks, they should be fired. and unfortunately, for standing against this common sense measure, the teacher's unions has made themselves an enemy of higher quality education

the usa will fall in this world while other countries with a better grasp on how serious education is will rise. there really is nothing wrong with spending a lot of money on education. but HOW that money is spent, without any accountability, is going to destroy this country

For better or worse...

[sydlexius]

Schools such as RFK were built with funds from a bond measure passed by voters in the LA county area. The terms of this bond measure requires that funds be spent on construction, and forbade any other use. There was a very good piece on this issue that I've linked to: http://www.kcet.org/socal/socal_connected_online/video/blackboard-bungle.html

Re:I can think of better uses for $500 million

[_Sharp'r_]

I was the Board Chair and was directly involved two years ago in building a very nice public school facility, custom designed, for 650 students. It cost $7.5 million to build. Factor in different locational-related costs and that'd be $9 million in LA. $13,846/student.

You'd have better efficiencies of scale to take advantage of in building a 4200 student school, but we'll pretend it should only cost about the same per student. You could say the LA school is going to be even way nicer and cost twice as much and I might buy that argument. You could say they have a bigger bureaucracy to deal with and that's going to double the cost per student again, making it 4x as big and while that's quite a monument to bureaucratic inefficiency, it's certainly believable.

For this school to cost literally 10x as much per student ($137,619/student) as the school we built... there's a lot of graft and people and/or organizations being bought off at that price. There's no other rational explanation for this level of cost.

I mean really, for $124K EXTRA per student they should at least have dorm rooms with bathrooms, etc... on site for all the students and staff....