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School District Owes $1 Billion On $100 Million Loan
NPR ^ | 12/9/2012 | Richard Gonzales

Posted on 12/09/2012 8:43:02 AM PST by RLM

More than 200 school districts across California are taking a second look at the high price of the debt they've taken on using risky financial arrangements. Collectively, the districts have borrowed billions in loans that defer payments for years — leaving many districts owing far more than they borrowed.

(Excerpt) Read more at npr.org ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Government; US: California
KEYWORDS: bonds; debt; school
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To: RLM
If you’ve ever had business dealings with school districts, you quickly learn that school administrators are not the brightest lights on the string.

I have to relate again my observations of a principal, several years ago, at a high school not too far from Poway High, although in a different district. When his district was opening a new high school, which would relieve overcrowding in his high school, he made a fervent pitch to the parent "foundation" to raise even more money than they had in prior years. I was in a meeting where he said words to the effect that, "We will not get the state funding that we have had in previous years, so we are looking to The Foundation to make up as much of the short-fall as possible."

Now, his enrollment was going to drop by about 40% the following year because those students would be going to the new high school. Not one person in that meeting suggested to him that perhaps his school didn't need as much money as before, because they wouldn't have as many students the next year.

He has since been promoted to higher office within the district.

21 posted on 12/09/2012 10:42:32 AM PST by RightField (one of the obstreperous citizens insisting on incorrect thinking - C. Krauthamer)
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To: RightField

lol. That sounds about normal.


22 posted on 12/09/2012 10:50:32 AM PST by GeronL (http://asspos.blogspot.com)
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To: RightField

The school funding fiasco gets even better. In the school district near where I live, the district now has two relatively new schools that are totally unoccupied due to changing demographics and a declining K-8 enrollment in the immediate area served by the schools. But no problem for school administrators as they are now building still another school across town, which in all probability, will have a declining enrollment as demographics change. And, the local citizens voted themselves still another bond obligation for regular maintenance and technology upgrades that won’t do a thing toward enhancing student achievement and allows the use of bond money for routine maintenance.
Unfortunately most young parent voters are clueless and uninformed, and like most parents, are more focused on the basics of life such as paying bills, or keeping and finding job, to be involved in local school politics. So, in the “anything for the kids mentality”, they vote to give the schools more money even before finding out if they’re getting good value for the money they already give to the schools. The fact is, they are not.
Then no one considers that school buildings are probably one of the most poorly used public resources, often only being used for education only 6 or 7 hours per day. A typical high school begins school around 8 am, and discharges the students about 2:30 or 3 pm. How much creativity would it take to adjust schedules to use the school classroom assets from say 7 am to 6 or 7 pm. Perhaps such a schedule is not quite as convenient, but certainly a better alternative to going into serious debt. Naturally the teachers unions would whine, but who cares since they would probably still have classroom time of less than 5 or 6 hours per day. Then beyond that, the same assets could be used 12 months per year instead of the typical 8 or 9 months.


23 posted on 12/09/2012 11:04:05 AM PST by RLM
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To: RightField

The school funding fiasco gets even better. In the school district near where I live, the district now has two relatively new schools that are totally unoccupied due to changing demographics and a declining K-8 enrollment in the immediate area served by the schools. But no problem for school administrators as they are now building still another school across town, which in all probability, will have a declining enrollment as demographics change. And, the local citizens voted themselves still another bond obligation for regular maintenance and technology upgrades that won’t do a thing toward enhancing student achievement and allows the use of bond money for routine maintenance.
Unfortunately most young parent voters are clueless and uninformed, and like most parents, are more focused on the basics of life such as paying bills, or keeping and finding job, to be involved in local school politics. So, in the “anything for the kids mentality”, they vote to give the schools more money even before finding out if they’re getting good value for the money they already give to the schools. The fact is, they are not.
Then no one considers that school buildings are probably one of the most poorly used public resources, often only being used for education only 6 or 7 hours per day. A typical high school begins school around 8 am, and discharges the students about 2:30 or 3 pm. How much creativity would it take to adjust schedules to use the school classroom assets from say 7 am to 6 or 7 pm. Perhaps such a schedule is not quite as convenient, but certainly a better alternative to going into serious debt. Naturally the teachers unions would whine, but who cares since they would probably still have classroom time of less than 5 or 6 hours per day. Then beyond that, the same assets could be used 12 months per year instead of the typical 8 or 9 months.


24 posted on 12/09/2012 11:07:49 AM PST by RLM
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To: SkyDancer

Cannot pay it back. Should be treated like student loans. Too much of a burden so just wipe them off the plate.


25 posted on 12/09/2012 11:55:48 AM PST by edcoil (It is not over until I win.)
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To: RLM

This debt episode in the US is a moral tale of the afterath of a people culturally cleansed of it’s history, morals, values and virtue by fly by night, worldly city slicker limo liberals.

We have devolved into a society in which American cultural common sense is denounced as mean spirited, greedy, unsophisticated and uneducated. Leftists denounced it as “acting white.” In addition, globalism has devolved America’s business ethics to that of a mob boss predator running a pay day loan shark operation in a Chicago ghetto.

Polticans fed both the voter’s mindless greed and envy for immediate gratification and the loan shark’s greed. They did it for power and money and politicans on both sides of the aisle served the insanity of both contigencies - voters with no moral intellegence and business interests with no ethics.

It has to collapse. The loan sharks are the ones who should be left holding the bag of the scams they invested in. If we want anything to change, the limo-liberal scam artists at the top of the lending institutions should be made to poney up their ill gotten gains to offset some of the losses they caused to their financial institutions and investors.

We need laws making it possible for people who can do math to sue to halt politicans and business interests who are making criminal loan deals. The penality of the government represenatives involved in losing law suit halting a loan scam should be removal from their offices and jobs. The States, towns and cities should be made bankrupt with terms that they pay back a reasonable amount for the loans their politicans took on.


26 posted on 12/09/2012 11:55:49 AM PST by SaraJohnson
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To: RLM

Every school district should get a 2 trillion dollar coin. Prob solved.


27 posted on 12/09/2012 12:40:03 PM PST by deadrock
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To: FlingWingFlyer

Loan sharks aren’t in the business of helping.


28 posted on 12/09/2012 2:25:41 PM PST by Vaduz
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