The more I read about the new high school prsopoal, the more infuriated I get. OK, I get that the current facilities are outdated and in (evidentially) a state of major disrepair. Putting aside the incompetence that allowed the current facilities to get to that state how do we justify spending over 30 million dollars to build facilities that will only be able to adequately educate 322 students? For the life of the 20 year bond, that works out to a cost of $93,000 for a classroom of 20 students for each year. WOW! As quoted from the district web site “We are not designing for growth, as the trend over the past ten years and the projections for the next several years does not indicate growth.” Give me a break – it’s this same lack of foresight that leaves us where we are at today. “ next several years”, so let’s commit to a 20 year bond and only plan for the “next several years”. Get real! If it were up to the city government, by the way that they hand out permits like candy, we’d be another overpriced tourist trap 10 years down the road with double the population. Do we really “NEED” to build a 30 million dollar monolithic structure which pays homage to the architect and school board when other, simpler structures, which could be built at a fraction of the cost would more than suffice? Why not a simple educational “city”, replete with single classroom school houses and a few small buildings for administration and maintenance. A dozen small, simple structures could easily be built for under $500k each – a la log cabin style. As attractive as TWO new gymnasiums may seem, they have to be viable ONLY after every student has all the books they need, after each classroom seat has an up to date work station and ONLY after each teacher is getting paid a salary which would allow them to truly dedicate themselves to the student the way that we expect them to. Let’s get our priorities straight, our feet back on the ground and make common sense decisions based on getting real and keeping within our means.
