Slashdot Mirror
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."
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?
No, but some graffiti or an earthquake will turn their precious fine art murals and marble memorial into nostalgia discussed in the teachers' lounge.
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
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
Just another example of a society that cannot seperate form from function.
It's like saying, "I do not know how to make a decent school, so I will make a really impressive building, which will suffice as a school"
It makes want to retch. My parents were teachers (retired) and they stay in touch with many teachers who came from their students (from my generation) who they had inspired to teach themselves.
It is reprehensible for a school board (ANY school board) to spend so much damned money on a building when the REAL key to eduction (teachers, DUH!) are underpaid, undersupplied (way too many have to buy materials out of their own pockets) and set in front of huge classes (most of my daughter's classes have 40 students in them this year) only to be judged by standardized tests.
What happened to inspiring students? What happened to drawing their experiences out of them so that they can relate to the lessons and apply them to their lifes? What happened to all the desire to reach a kid and help them realize how they fit into society instead of falling out? Sure it makes a great movie (when the teachers have proven it to work), but the school boards won't fund better teacher salaries!
Oh yeah, a big expensive building is going to fix it.
TOTAL BS!
Wherever You Go, There You Are
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.
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....
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
or there aren't enough teaching jobs, tbh once the ratio's get down to 1:5 teachers to students, then we can start worrying about if the number of jobs is right. You forget this isn't a normal job market, or revenue system and you must not have kids.
All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
California doesn't, except for a few old white folks (who will soon pass on) object to illegal immigration. For most Californians, the Reconquista cannot come soon enough.
Now that's a ton of bullshit. Just about everyone I know here in Cali is an immigrant, and they uniformly have a problem with illegal immigration. The legal immigration path is hard work (needlessly complicated and expensive IMO), and those who have done it don't exactly like those who haven't.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.