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?
You might also like:
- Public school, philosophy on good government, mobile telephone voice mail, getting along…
I don’t give my mobile telephone number out much, and it’s mostly because I don’t live and die by my… - More on Obama’s address to public school students
The White House web site has published the text of the speech Obama intends to give to public school… - Hoping Obamacare’s Waterloo is imminent
It’s been a while since I have, but I’m pretty weary of blogging about Obamacare. Hopefully there wi… - The first grade bell tolls…
First grade begins tomorrow for a little boy who lives in my house. Lea is “dry-running” the necessa… - Legendary game show host Tom Kennedy dead at 93
Tom Kennedy died last week. He was 93. I have Bob Barker at the top of my game show host list, but m…
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.