Behold the $578 million public school

The Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools complex, part of the public school system, was just completed on the site of the Ambassador Hotel, where its namesake was killed in 1968.  It will house 4,200 K-12 pupils when it opens in Los Angeles next month.

It cost $578,000,000.

It’s not, you know, real money, though.  It’s just the school system budget.  Actually “voter-approved bonds that do not affect the educational budget” funded this monstrosity, according to “officials.”

Thank God for that.

(By the way, the LA Unified School District has laid off almost 3,000 teachers over the past two years, and currently faces a $640,000,000 budget shortfall.)

The above linked article points out that this is only the priciest example of a not-as-uncommon-as-you-might-think trend.  Dozens of public schools around the nation check in at $100-million-plus.  What, you never had padded maple floors?  Bamboo nooks?  Orchestra-pit auditoriums?  Gourmet cafeterias?  How did you ever learn a thing, you poor dear?  Sheesh, fifth through tenth grade, I didn’t even have air conditioning.

“Architects and builders love this stuff, but there’s a little bit of a lack of discipline here,” – Mary Filardo, executive director of 21st Century School Fund in Washington, D.C., which promotes urban school construction

Ya think?

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2 thoughts on “Behold the $578 million public school”

  1. The high school I graduated from looked like a prison…a big, cement, rectangular block with no windows, surrounded by a high chain link fence and patrolled by a security guard in a golf cart. Hmmm, maybe it was a prison. But regardless, I feel totally robbed that I missed out on the kind of architectural chaos that those kids in L.A. are getting. I mean, who wouldn’t want to start their day looking at a weird face with eyes at half mast on the front of their school? And the George Jetson/half Saturn ring in the back? Genius! What a flippin’ waste of money. The priorities in this country are getting more mangled by the day. Spend a huge amount of money on a school that won’t have enough teachers because they were laid off due to budget cuts. Brilliant.

    Reply

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