Little schools, big schools
The nation's one-room schoolhouses, in which half of all America's youths were once enrolled, are now vanishing. Only 423 one-room, one-teacher schools remain in the US - and some have Internet access and visiting education specialists. Allison Shelley's sympathetic article provides a wealth of links for those interested in this bit of Americana, as well as in-depth stories of four one-room schools that are still operational.
Be sure to click on the photo gallery accompanying the article. Reminds me a lot of the town where my mom and dad grew up. While the one-room schools there have been replaced with behemoth buildings, many one room-churches still remain...
At the other extreme, there's Los Angeles's Belmont Learning Center, aka the most expensive high school in history, aka "The Belmonster". Almost $200 million has already been spent on the non-operational school, which, according to the Pacific Research Institute, has given us "clear lessons about what is wrong with California's government education system":
Los Angeles could have eased overcrowding by converting administrative facilities to classrooms. They opted instead to build Belmont, a high-school for 5,000 students, a shopping mall, and 120 apartments. The grandiose project raised expectations and proved difficult to oppose, even with a $200 million price tag...
The winning bid came from a firm with connections in the district. But in 1998, a year after breaking ground, a report indicated serious environmental problems on the site, including seepage of methane gas. The report got buried but the dangers could not be long ignored.
In January 2000, the Los Angeles Board of education voted to kill the project, which had then consumed more than $123 million without serving a single student. It now stands partly wrapped in plywood and plastic, a monument to waste and ineptitude visible from the Harbor Freeway...
On May 22, the Los Angeles Board of Education voted 4-3 to plow another $111 million into the Belmont Learning Center. The new plan includes a park but no apartments or retail space. The revamped school will serve 2,600 students, just over half the original estimate. And yet the cost has increased to more than a quarter billion dollars. Based on past experience, the actual cost will be even higher...
If finished at all, the facilities deliver less than promised. That is because buildings and students play a secondary role.The system works best as a means for the redistribution of wealth from taxpayers to educational bureaucrats and their cronies. For them, Belmont is a raging success. Many took the money and ran. As far as can be discerned, not a single district employee was fired, though several have been suspended for a year-with pay, of course.This is how things work in the government education monopoly, which thrives on waste, facilitates corruption, cheats those it claims to serve, and ultimately harms the entire state...
This came in an email from the PRI's Capital Ideas page, but the link isn't up there yet.
Posted by kswygert at May 29, 2003 09:12 AM