Mark_Ockerbloom's Blog

If you think Newton's new high school at a cool $200 million is outrageously costly, keep this in mind, a $230 million high school is going up on the west coast. The Los Angeles High School for the Visual and Performing Arts will be home to 1,600 students when it opens next year. The five acre campus features, among many other things, a steel tower wrapped in ribbon and a 995 seat theatre. The problem? Aside from the pumped up price tag (it was originally budgeted for $120 million)...more than a quarter of the 700,000 other students in the district go to school in temporary classrooms due to overcrowding or in buildings that are in desperate need of repair.

How is it school officials can be so over the top for one school at the expense of so many others? Don't have an answer for that one, but the school committee argues a better school will attract better teachers...who in theory will better educate the student body. But one expert points out that districts in Seattle and Jacksonville, Fla., have shown significant improvement by recruiting and retaining better teachers and revising curriculum and not through construction drives. Sounds reasonable to me, how 'bout you?