Is Your Child's High School Education worth $142,000???

Recently, the Los Angeles County School District constructed a post-modern school facility. The mammoth structure houses students in grades K-12 in the Robert F. Kennedy School District; 4200 students in all. It has 3 full size athletic fields, a Taj Mahal study area, and auditoriums that surpass the technology of major universities. All of this sits on a sprawling 23 acres of land. The price tag? $578,000,000. While this price tag seems a monstrosity to the taxpayer, it could very well be justified under America's continuing decline in student intelligence across the board compared with European and Asian superpowers. However, in light of California's huge budget deficit and the subsequent layoff of thousands of public school teachers, this futuristic construction pet project of LA County seems, at the least, outlandishly excessive. The irony lies in the notion that you are laying off teachers who would teach students in the new facility to BUILD the facility. The school district's board claims the money was raised not through property taxes or mills, but through bond money claimed through the state, which could only be used for the construction of a new school building. To further complicate the matter, the district claims the voters of LA County approved this proposition in a recent election. The bottom line though is this: Is your child's high school education really worth $142,000? This is the amount per student the school district is spending in the new facility. We many not know the answer for a decade or more until the current student body passes through the facility and out into the job market. Only time will tell if such an ambitious project is for the student's benefit, or for the greedy members of the school board and county.