Posted on 09/15/2010 9:55:24 AM PDT by TruthHound
The owner of a Los Angeles home assessed at $450,000 pays more than $750 a year to finance bonds for the Los Angeles Unified School District.
Which is why it is galling to some that the district has spent, or misspent, more than half-a-billion dollars on a new school, while laying off hundreds of teachers, increasing class sizes and starting the school year a week later than usual - to save money.
And what a school it is. The campus was built on the site of the Ambassador Hotel on Wilshire Boulevard, where its namesake, Robert F. Kennedy, was assassinated in 1968. It features, among other perks for the 3,700 K-12 students it will educate, $1 million in artwork - murals and dioramas, along with a replica of the ballroom where Kennedy was assassinated.
Proponents of the new campus point out that fewer students from the combined schools the campus will serve will be bused, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The RFK campus will feature two gyms, a state-of the-art cafeteria that can serve 1,000 students in 12 minutes (we can't argue with that enhancement) and a park that would be open to all residents. As would a 25-meter swimming pool and the 585-seat auditorium, which the Times described as "embellished with a richly textured Moroccan motif of reds, yellow and browns." The ceiling features "pinpricks of light like distant stars."
Preservationists decry the fact that more wasn't made of the site's heritage, while opponents agree,
as we do, that for taxpayers hard-pressed to preserve their homes and their very lifestyles, $578 million is extravagant, wasteful and an insult to the taxpayers who are paying the bill.
So this is sort of a shrine for RFK?
I’ve been looking for a chance to tell this somewhere.
I watched the 1997 movie “Contact” with Jodie Foster again the other night. In the movie, they had received plans from outer space to build a massive transporter. Governments around the world were asked to contribute to the cost of building it due to the astounding size of the undertaking.
The news announcer covering its unveiling said in serious tone that it cost over one-third of a trillion dollars, implying that no one country could go it alone!
Now, 13 years later, California builds a high school for almost 2/3 of a trillion. That’s inflation for you, only it isn’t, sadly. It’s just an illustration of how out of touch the free spenders really have become.
A third of a trillion has gone from the realm of science fiction to reality in California in a little over a decade, illustrating just how much California public spending is detached from the real world.
Time for a little Greek lightning...
I watched local coverage of this beast. Some of the decorating and fittings are just unbelieveable. The theatre looks like the Kodak or some other glorified theater. Can’t wait to see what the little thugs and illegals do to deface this beautiful school. What a waste of cash.
Let me be the first to point out that 1/3 of a trillion is about 1000 times more than 1/2 of a billion.
1 third of a trillion is 333.3 billion while 2/3rds would be 666.6 billion. They spent 550 million which is a bit more then half a billion. Which is what .05% of a trillion?
This new school is a shire to Bobby Kennedy why else the name and use of the ex-hotel grounds where he was killed?
The most interesting thing is the liberals had to emplace talking benches to inform the current generation of students who Bobby Kennedy was and what happened. If anything more clearly demonstrates the abject failure of public education in LA I don't know about it. Not only did the liberals have to do the initial teaching but they had to do it verbally.
Ya might wanna check your math. I think you meant Billion not Trillion.
I hope they teach math, ethics , history and civics at that fancy school.
A target Bahab and ahab can’t refuse.
The age for gang recruitment is going to get lower. The age that kids lose their innocence is going to get lower. The age that girls have their first baby is going to get lower. This is just a bad idea from whatever angle you look at it.
Place will be shut down after it gets vandalized.If it doesn’t suffer from arson first.
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