A 578 million dollar school....really?

[krisy]

Some of the schools in my kids district don't even have air conditioning.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100822/ap_on_re_us/us_taj_mahal_schools


And how could they lay off 3,000 teachers yet build this extravagent school? Tax levy or not. That money should have been used to save jobs

[Noir]

I heard about this in passing the otherday on the WorldService at the very end there was a clip saying it was privately not publicly funded.

Now i'm not sure how the American PFI system works, or if its in anyway comparable to the british one, but if it is then it wouldn't matter if the school cost $100K or $5000K a cent would not of gone to teachers wages ect.

[Insein]

No it was public money. $20 billion in voter approved muni bonds were issued "long before the budget pinch." What I don't get is, once they realized the state of the economy in 2008, why don't they reallocate that money to paying teachers to keep their jobs (assuming they are needed and not just overstocked union positions) instead of building a palace that a majority of kids in the district will never see?

You can reallocate money to new projects. Saying your hands are tied cause the money was already allocated is a big cop out. They are basically saying, "we already had plans to payoff our union thugs with this money by laundering it through an overpriced school, plus take a little from the bottom for ourselves and we can't go back now."

[sybarite]

California at its finest. And they want the federal government to bail them out.

[Abbey Marie]

It could be a 3 Billion school, and it still won't change a thing in terms of kids valuing their education. They either do (being taught to do so at home), or they don't.

[Kathianne]

I heard about this in passing the otherday on the WorldService at the very end there was a clip saying it was privately not publicly funded.

Now i'm not sure how the American PFI system works, or if its in anyway comparable to the british one, but if it is then it wouldn't matter if the school cost $100K or $5000K a cent would not of gone to teachers wages ect.

Yes and no on funding, from op link:


... In Los Angeles, officials say the new schools were planned long before the economic pinch and are funded by $20 billion in voter-approved bonds that do not affect the educational budget.

Still, even LA Unified Superintendent Ramon Cortines derided some of the extravagance, noting that donations should have been sought to fund the RFK project's talking benches commemorating the site's history.
...