The Place where RFK And Public Education Died

Los Angeles has just spent $578 million on the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools, which is really just one big honkin' public school. It's the most expensive public school in the nation. This isn't a school for 50,000 students. Oh no, only about 4,200 students will be able to go there, which means it will cost about $135,000 per student for the first year alone. At that rate, they could have provided a regular education to these kids, paid for their college, and probably got them a down payment on a house. The voters voted on it before the economic collapse, but even in regular times, this was an insane waste of money. The money isn't going to get better teachers, or books. No, the main cost is on architectural features. As you can see in the video on this page (sorry, I tried to find a YouTube video), the inside is pretty damn snazzy.

This was once the location of the The Ambassador Hotel, the hostel where Robert F. Kennedy was shot in (hence the name). They designed it based on the old hotel, but does the environment really matter for teaching kids? Will this school produce doctors and scientists that will cure cancer and other diseases? It damn well better! Of course anyone with half a brain can see that's not going to be the case. If you stick a kid in a barn with a good teacher and access to good books and the internet, you're going to end up with a better educated kid than one who goes to a school with magnificent architectural details and swimming pools and lacks good teachers. When you have dropout rates like this, it's hard to imagine the thinking behind funding such a building.

This isn't just a one time thing either. There are many schools around the country that are costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars to build. This video from CATO explains how school districts are hiding a lot of the costs of educating our kids. Even without these added expenses, they seem like a waste of money. More people need to wake up and realize that more money and fancier classrooms do not always equal better educated students.



It's time that money stops going to buildings and finally starts going to the students. If we are going to be publicly funding education, we must have school choice for students and parents and get rid of this bloated public educational system as it currently is. If we don't, there will be a country with nobody smart enough to run it. This doesn't mean we have to abandon the old schools and fire all the teachers. All we need to do is go to a voucher system where the students get the money and spend it on the best school for them. The schools are then required to operate like a private business and use the money they get from students to run it, and expand it in a way that makes sense, instead of a way that exploits the taxpayers and does nothing to help the students learn.

Lots of parents already support this, but a lot of teachers and their unions don't. However, building this school should be a wake-up call to teachers. Building these new schools will only put your jobs in danger. California and all of these other states are cutting back on education spending. They aren't going to sell their buildings they spent millions to build, they'll just get rid of teachers and staff. If you're a teacher, would you rather work in a regular building and have job security, or an expensive, new building to work in that will probably cost you your job? If parents had the choice, most wouldn't give a damn about the building, but what kind of education their kids get. That comes down to how well the teachers actually teach their kids. If you truly are a good teacher, then you'll not only have job security, but you'll probably get paid more for doing a good job instead of having that money spent on a school swimming pool, or Tiki themed auditorium. If you're just in it for the government benefits, then how long do you think the taxpayers are going to bend to your demand?

If we can't get teachers to agree, then another option that we really should look into is online learning. One of my favorite sites is The Khan Academy, which is a totally free, and probably better, way of learning the same stuff we pay tens of thousands of dollars for each year. Whatever choice we make for the future education of this country, we have to make some kind of choice now, because the status quo is not working and we can't afford to put this off any longer.