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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."
a mosque?
Thanks in advance.
Yours In Astrakhan,
K. Trout
Do nerds only go to private schools?
I know that California's budget concerns go far beyond just the building of this school, but this is still the kind of irresponsible spending that got them into the mess they're currently in. If I were in charge of this project, I wouldn't want anyone to know about it right now.
For half a billion dollars, we could have had half a stealth bomber.
Or am I thinking of some other location?
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Cause the government wants it there. There is a code buried in the summary. All you need is the algorithm.
I just have to ask...what is the state-of-the-art when it comes to swimming pools? I kind of thought we had that nailed down years ago. What, do they fill them with ferrofluids or some space age gel now?
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
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Nerds. Schools.
Schools. Nerds.
I'm pretty sure there's a connection there. As for the expense, that's what happens when you have a monopoly on money - you don't need to cut costs. You are free to spend as much as you want, because there's no competitor to undercut you with lower cost goods. Color me unsurprised.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
In one place? Must make beating younger students up for money real easy with the age spread. Even the most wimpy sophomore can always prey on the toddlers.
I bet such a luxury compound has some swanky digs for the guys at the top. They don't say much about that understandably. But heck, nothing is too good for the administrators.
I also don't understand the comment about 70s schools without windows. I went to schools that were built in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, and they all had at least one window per room. I know because I used to stare out of it rather than listen to the boring teacher. (Maybe that's an argument for why windows are bad.)
Plus isn't the purpose of school to adjust kids to their future lives as adults? I certainly don't have any windows on my cubicle.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
$21 Billion. Sorry it changed after you posted.
What is this? Some kind of parody of everything that's wrong with America? Is the developer supposed to come out from behind the curtain and say, "you idiots! This was a test! You weren't supposed to actually approve this thing!"?
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
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
That was only for the rich. The average slobs went to a building just like we did - or no schooling at all.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Bigger schools means teachers and students are seen less as humans and just another tally mark to the administration. I could see the benefit if they have some good technical classes so they would have good and up to date tools to work with but other than that, it's just not good.
No. Unlike the Southern religious hypocrisy, we Californians are into a "green" kind of hypocrisy.
Take, for example, a mandate that buildings have flushless urinals installed to save water. Yet, the same buildings often feature auto-flushing toilets which flush everytime you wipe your ass(that is, at least twice, and often more) where each flush has enough power to swallow a basketball-sized dump. Wasteful, and very hypocritical.
When I was going to high school in the late 90s and early 00s, I was one of the first classes to use the $80 million dollar "palace" of a high school that the local government built for the students. However, during my four years in high school, it became pretty apparent pretty quickly that just because it cost $80 million dollars to build doesn't necessarily mean it's worth $80 million dollars. As the result of no-compete bids and cronyism between the contractors and local government, by the end of my 4th year, the whole place was starting to fall apart and it was only about 6 years old at this point. I think one of the students literally managed to kick or hit the dedication stone into the wall.
Dang. There's most of the district's budget shortfall, right there in this one half a billion $ + monument to waste and excess.
There is no doubt a school could be built for less.
Were you tipped off by the fact that this is the most expensive public school?
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
If anyone wonders why anyone votes "NO" on bond measures and referendums, this is why. We all want good educations for our youth, but disproportionate allocation and spending like this wreak of corruption and misappropriation. Other nations leap ahead because they are actually putting real teachers in place, paying them well and firing the bad ones, and supporting students all across their country. Our system is so locally based that there is no way to ever lift up those in a bad tax base. Instead, the rich get rich public schools, and the poor get either terrible facilities or overfunded behemoths with sub-par teachers. It's really time to eliminate local school districts, and fund states equally. That way, when a state legislature passes more ed money around, it goes to the right places.
Most people don't know that the LAUSD has been building schools at a completely insane pace. For the 15 years from 1997-2012, there has been an average of one new school opened every month! Sure, schools were neglected in the past, but there are tons of brand-new public schools in LA now.
dollars in the education budget, like improving science? They could have probably added enough computers to the LA school system to guarantee access to all students. The number of dollars here is just mind boggling. When a school system like LA is dropping teachers right and left over budget problems where is the criminal investigation to put the people who signed off on this?
If they had spent this money on something other than a school you can damn well bet people would be bitching "think of the children".
This is a monument to the school board. It should be the head stone.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
And the invasive brain surgery and mind control.... Wait, I guess we're just waiting for the invasive brain surgery parts
Parents who care about their children help them overcome any nerdish tendencies.
was that from Mein Kampf?
Why can't we go back to using jumpers to configure slot adapter cards? Why? I say!
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.
Keep in mind that capital costs and operating costs are very different things when it comes to government accounting. Very often funds from higher levels of government are for capital costs only. Capital costs provide quick economic turnover which is something the government strives to do. If they hadn't built this school it doesn't mean the money would have gone to pay teachers. Not that I'm suggesting that the system is ok, just that you shouldn't necessarily criticize this particular project on these grounds.
With a price tag like that, the upkeep is going to be astronomical. When they upgraded our local school to have air conditioning, they couldn't turn it on because it would cost ~$25,000 just to start! They are also talking about turning a perfectly good grass field into astroturf at a cost of 1 million dollars.
I don't know about other states, but in CA once money is earmarked for construction (many times it's so-called "one-time" money, or money that came from a one time windfall), one is prohibited from using it for any other purpose. For instance, at my daughter's school district, the new annex just completed this year at the district office has leather couches, mahoghany accent tables, and marble floors in their reception area. All the money for the construction of this annex was earmarked years ago, when the economy was still "strong". Despite the fact that the actual monetary needs of the district are elsewhere (teachers anyone?), they cannot use the money for anything else, even though it would have made much more sense to go with cheaper materials and use the surplus from construction to fund instruction.
NO CARRIER
If they knew exactly what they faced, they'd probably revolt and form a new society.
No there are more teachers than jobs because teachers are getting laid off all over the nation because their unions don't have the pull to counter all the PORK spending that is not cut and continues to be added to budgets by more influential forces.
Plenty of jobs are underpaid yet they find workers who either want the job OR just NEED work. Some jobs are so low that Americans do not want them so then illegals take them; not because the job is so horrible but because the pay is too low for the work. Do we want teachers paid so bad that nobody wants to become a teacher BECAUSE the pay is so low.... then hire illegals to do the work? There are already good teachers who are doing other jobs because it takes a lifetime to make a good wage as a teacher.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
at least your project have not gotten canceled and your department downsized.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
That's a surefire way to get the public to vote no on every funding levy for the next 30 years. I've seen it happen with a $40M school.
Little girls, like butterflies, need no excuse. -- L. Long
Even nerds that go to private schools pay taxes.
-- Support a free market in the field of government
There's a reason for schools to look like thy do: It is a sturdy way to build things. When you have a building that is going to be frequented by a bunch of kids, who have no real investment or care in the well being of the building, it pays to build it to last. That means things like cinder-block walls (painted with heavy duty marine paint), tough, thin, carpet and so on. No it is not the peak of aesthetics but it does the job well. It takes abuse and hardly shows it. The high schools in my home town were like that and they aged very well. Sure it did have a "prison" look to it I guess but it held up to the students. You didn't have to repair holes in drywall all the time (hell I knocked a hole in my drywall and I try to be careful with that), you didn't have to repaint all the time, etc.
So it isn't just a matter of not spending a shit ton on a building, that could better go to teacher salaries and so on, but it is also a matter of longevity and maintenance. You want to put a building in place that you can use 30, 50, even 100 years from now all while being abused by students and you don't want to have to spend an arm and a leg doing it. That means some aesthetic compromises, but you'll get over it.
Hell I see that where I work (a university). My building is older, late 70s I think is when it was built. Main structure is brick, most floors are tough polyvinyl chloride, windows are a reasonable size and only in areas that matter and so on. It isn't the best looking building, but it holds up well. It can handle abuse (like having bigass servers moved around) well.
Next door is a new "dramatic" architecture building. Massive glass wall, exposed steel structure, etc. Ok cool... Except for all the problems. Cooling costs are astronomical, vandals brake the windows that make up the glass wall, the structure is rusting and so on. Has some ridiculous maintenance costs, many of which are simply being neglected.
Frankly, I'll take out "ugly" building. No it doesn't look as cool and the offices only have a normal window rather than a wall that is a window, but the damn thing holds up. It'll probably still be standing 30 years from now, not so sure about the building next door.