$578 million L.A. school

John Seiler:

As a punctuation point to my recent article, “L.A. spends $30K per student,” the LAUSD is opening it’s new $578 million school. It will have, incredibly, 4,200 students. This isn’t school, it’s an educational gulag. Imagine spending 13 of the best years of your life cooped up there.

The cost is $137,619 for each student slot.

AP writes:

The RFK complex follows on the heels of two other LA schools among the nation’s costliest — the $377 million Edward R. Roybal Learning Center, which opened in 2008, and the $232 million Visual and Performing Arts High School that debuted in 2009.

The pricey schools have come during a sensitive period for the nation’s second-largest school system: Nearly 3,000 teachers have been laid off over the past two years, the academic year and programs have been slashed. The district also faces a $640 million shortfall and some schools persistently rank among the nation’s lowest performing….

Construction costs at LA Unified are the second-highest in the nation — something the district blames on skyrocketing material and land prices, rigorous seismic codes and unionized labor.

When America was great, we had small, locally controlled schools that parents supervised. Now, we have schools that are just large prisons run by educrats and guards.