LA Unveils $568 Million School
2010 August 23
This is something Justrand mentioned yesterday, but it deserves greater attention. About 30 years ago educators decided that public schools needed to resemble palaces with atriums, towers, orchestra pits, turf fields and more. My local school district has a special trick is used several times. It left a single wall remaining and constructed a new school around that wall and termed it a renovation – three times.
The theory was that student performance would improve if they were in ultra-modern state-of-the-art facilities. Based on testing results, that hasn’t happened.
Meanwhile, Catholic, Lutheran and Christian schools operate out of simple, no-frill facilities. My daughter attends a Catholic high school in a 45 year old building. There is no air conditioning although school starts next week. They simply open windows and use fans. There is no swimming pool, tennis courts or auditorium. They rent pool time before school from the public schools and use the city’s facilities for tennis. Twice a year they rent the public school auditorium for their plays. Teachers are paid subatantially less than their public school counterparts. Yet, they outperform public schools on tests and virtually every graduate goes on to college.
The same is true of colleges and universities. There was a real need for additional facilities in the 1960s and early 1970s because of the “baby boom” … but they keep adding state of the art facilities even though enrollment has leveled off or declines. Professors spend 6-9 hours of class time a week, while instructors handle the dirty work. Many full professors make six-figure salaries and have great benefits.
Education is but one area of many where government has wasted taxpayer dollars. When are we going to start holding “public servants” accountable?
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