The Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools complex, part of the public school system, was just completed on the site of the Ambassador Hotel, where its namesake was killed in 1968. It will house 4,200 K-12 pupils when it opens in Los Angeles next month.

It cost $578,000,000.

It’s not, you know, real money, though. It’s just the school system budget. Actually “voter-approved bonds that do not affect the educational budget” funded this monstrosity, according to “officials.”

Thank God for that.

(By the way, the LA Unified School District has laid off almost 3,000 teachers over the past two years, and currently faces a $640,000,000 budget shortfall.)

The above linked article points out that this is only the priciest example of a not-as-uncommon-as-you-might-think trend. Dozens of public schools around the nation check in at $100-million-plus. What, you never had padded maple floors? Bamboo nooks? Orchestra-pit auditoriums? Gourmet cafeterias? How did you ever learn a thing, you poor dear? Sheesh, fifth through tenth grade, I didn’t even have air conditioning.

“Architects and builders love this stuff, but there’s a little bit of a lack of discipline here,” – Mary Filardo, executive director of 21st Century School Fund in Washington, D.C., which promotes urban school construction

Ya think?

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