Public School Spending Like There’s No Tomorrow
By Mary Theroux • Monday September 6, 2010 10:03 AM PDT • 11 Comments
The failed and bankrupt Los Angeles public school district is spending money like there’s no tomorrow—which for the students it’s failing to educate is unfortunately true.
The school district, currently running a $640 million deficit, is spending $578 million—about $140,000 per student—on a new, 24-acre school in the middle of Los Angeles. At the same time, the district has laid off 3,000 teachers over the past 2 years, and has the second lowest graduation rate in the country, at 40.6%.
L.A. claims to spend about $10,000 per student. But, as this article reveals, its actual per-pupil budget is $29,790, in stark contrast to private school spending:
Based on federal data, we estimate the typical private school in the L.A. area spends just under $8,500 to educate each student, and many far less. L.A. Unified, at almost $30,000, spends over 250 percent more.
The new $578 million Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools complex offers an auditorium with a starry ceiling; murals of Robert F. Kennedy and other public art totaling $1.3 million; a marble slab engraved with quotes by Cesar Chavez, Maya Angelou, and Ted Kennedy; and $54,000 talking benches that play a three-hour audio of the site’s history (it is built on the site of the old Ambassador Hotel, where Robert Kennedy was shot, and the school district had to fight Donald Trump to buy it).
The school district also spent $232 million for its new Visual and Performing Arts High school, and $377 million for a school originally budgeted at $110 million and that now ranks in the bottom third for students with similar demographics on state tests.
Voters need to quit enabling these profligate officials and start voting No on every school bond issue that makes it to the ballot. Dance studios with cushioned maple floors and kitchens with restaurant-quality pizza ovens don’t provide quality educations, and neither do unaccountable public school districts.
Tags: California, Education, Transparency 
The two big spenders of state money are often education and transportation, with much corruption in both.
ralph | Sep 6, 2010 | Reply
According to this WSJ info graphic on employment losses by sector of the economy, from Dec ’07 through July ’10 the only sectors to experience employment gains, not losses, were Education, Healthcare, and Federal + State Govts. Hmmm...I wonder why that may be.
Ryan Szabo | Sep 6, 2010 | Reply
All of this profligate spending would not be possible without legalized extortion called property taxes.
Read my articles on the fraud we call home ownership. We pretend to own, while paying like we do indeed own, but in reality, we are only given permission to rent the land from the town.
People, wake up! This is America, not the Soviet Union!
http://basspig.wordpress.com/ has many articles on why property taxes are immoral, and why YOU should be able to be safe and secure in YOUR home that YOU paid off!
Mark Weiss, P.E. | Sep 7, 2010 | Reply
This confirms what Prof. E. G. West was saying for many years. To quote from his Education and the State (3rd ed. Pub. Liberty Fund Inc. Indiana):
“Suppose that the 950 families out of the 1000 who would normally buy education now find themselves IN FACT in a situation where the government ‘does their spending for them’. Instead of purchasing schooling directly, their money is collected in taxes in return for which they are given ‘free’ education. Their position is now worsened because a public school system is less efficient, as late twentieth-century experience shows. From the school years 1971-72 to 1976-77, the total professional staff in U.S. public schools went up 8 per cent. The money cost of education increased by 68 per cent (or 21 per cent allowing for inflation). But as inputs thus increased output DECREASED. The number of students fell by 4 per cent as did the number of schools. The educational testing scores of all kinds (SAT, college board examinations and school common tests) showed declining student performance. Pronounced centralisation has increased the distance between the consumers of education and the suppliers (the administration). In addition it has introduced substantial deadweight costs of taxation.”
30 plus years on and we seem to be no further on.
John Harrison | Sep 9, 2010 | Reply
But Mary, it’s for the children...
Cathy | Sep 12, 2010 | Reply