Los Angeles to build $578 Million Dollar K-12 school

This really may be the most shocking display of denial and hubris I have ever read.

LA unveils $578 million dollar school

Does anyone realize how much money that is for 4200 students? For god sakes I really think that is enough money to feed and school every single child in Africa.

What the hell is going on - California is at least 20 billion in the hole and they are spending that kind of money on this nonsense?

I really am beginning to wonder if anybody gets how big of financial trouble this nation is in.



[edit on 23-8-2010 by proximo]

[edit on 23-8-2010 by proximo]

Quite pricey. But from the article, it seems most of this was planned before they ever foresaw this economic downturn.

I wonder how much it is going to cost to maintain that school.

Btw, your title is confusing. It says "to build" but it is already built.

I must conclude that there are some "special interest" students planned to attend the school. I am sure I could be wrong, but I live in the area, I know the dropout rate as I work in schools. Yes, our land is sky-high, but for heaven's sake, what is the justification for this?
BTW my kids went to a "prison block" school built in the 90s, and our brand-new high school is just the same, except they put 12-foot fences around all the schools when they built that one. How do LA students get a "nice" school with windows in these circumstances? Or, should I say why?
LA gets all the money for Southern California, I know that.

It's absolutely ridiculous but jam321 is right. I saw a brief news piece on it and the funds were allocated to be used for this project only.

Still, it's pretty bad when you've got school districts chopping left and right because they have a shortfall of a couple million and you see this. Our granddaughter just started 5th grade and she's already noticed where they're cutting corners on things like lunches.

And with all the amenitites of your average supermax facility. Half a billion dollars and they used to do it out of a one room schoolhouse.

reply to post by proximo


According to the article this is one of three extreme schools in the district, another 180+ million and 230+ million schools were built.

It'd be fine if it was a great preforming district.. build them a better school to better hone their minds..

But this is being built in THEE worst performing districts in the country......

As were the other 2 very expensive. Apparently New York also built a series of very expensive schools in very low performing districts....... This is what you get with a Liberal run school system. Ugly steel/glass monstrosities posing no educational value in poor ungrateful neighborhoods with the same low performing teachers.

Also, according to the article... it cost the school district 9 million dollars to argue with Donald Trump who wanted to build the worlds tallest building on the site.

I worked for a casino hotel many years ago that expanded. The expansion cost was roughly $330 Million and included: A 6-story parking garage with 1,600 parking spots, 600 room all suite hotel tower, and a 100,000 square foot convention facility, coupled with a new state-of-the-art nightclub, salon, huge infinity pools and jacuzzi's, and 10,000 sf. of additional casino space, all luxuriously appointed interiors and a 12 lane porte cache.

Now comparing that expansion with the building of this school is an absolutely ridiculous price to pay for a few hundred students. We could provide each one of the students a luxury hotel room with their education for less.

They could have spent $20 million for an industrial concrete tilt-up building and use drywall partitions for classrooms. It would serve the same function except making a few contractors rich.

The function of a school is to teach kids, something that the LAUSD fails at looking at their high dropout rate. The purpose of a school is not for prestige. Even in good times, spending so much is disgusting.

It goes to show that it is much easier to spend and waste other people's money.