In last night's VDARE.com column, I mentioned in passing:
The cost of building hundreds of public schools for this Amnesty Baby Boom (and, now, their kids) has been a key, if unmentioned, factor in the breaking of California’s budget. John Seiler reported last week that, when capital costs are included, the Los Angeles Unified School District spends almost $30,000 per student per year. [LAUSD spends $30K per student, CalWatchDog.com] For example, converting the old Ambassador Hotel on Wilshire Boulevard into a school is costing $578,000,000.
For some reason, I never see estimates of what percentage of the student body at this $578,000,000 school will be the children (or grandchildren) of illegal aliens. The LAUSD says:
The school-age population in this area is predominantly Latino (84%) and low-income (89%), with 50% classified as English Language Learners.
So, I guess we can guess.
Today, I walked around the 24 acre site of this Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools on the 3300 block of Wilshire Boulevard today to see what the taxpayers are getting for their $578,000,000.
Today, I walked around the 24 acre site of this Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools on the 3300 block of Wilshire Boulevard today to see what the taxpayers are getting for their $578,000,000.
The good news is that, at least, it's not an eyesore.
That's a sharp contrast to LAUSD's recent $237,000,000 downtown arts high school (above), the Water Slide of Doom (a.k.a., Japanese Robot Invader from Space Aiming Its Flamethrower at the LA Cathedral):
The new RFK school (which is built on the historic site of demolished Ambassador Hotel where RFK was assassinated by Palestinian immigrant terrorist Sirhan Sirhan in 1968, and where my mother somehow used to talk my dad into putting on the tuxedo he owned[!] and taking her dancing at the Coconut Grove nightclub) is done in the shiny neo-modernist style that's in fashion again. It's not as nice looking as the 1921 Ambassador Hotel (which was closed in 1989), but it's not offensive looking.
As for why it cost $578,000,000, or $135,000 per each of the 4200 students, well, I'm sure there are lots of instances of abuse and extravagance. For example, preserving the huge sloping ornamental lawn, about the size of a football field, that runs from Wilshire Blvd. to the buildings is an extravagance (the kids can't play sports on it due to the slope). But it does look nice in a crowded neighborhood.
The site is on LA's main public transportation artery, so students' parents don't need to drive them. LAUSD could have put up barracks-like school buildings (like those in which most Baby Boomer taxpayers in LA were educated -- most school buildings in LA built from 1945 to 1990 are more or less shacks), but the general public perhaps doesn't want an eyesore in such a prominent place.
The site is on LA's main public transportation artery, so students' parents don't need to drive them. LAUSD could have put up barracks-like school buildings (like those in which most Baby Boomer taxpayers in LA were educated -- most school buildings in LA built from 1945 to 1990 are more or less shacks), but the general public perhaps doesn't want an eyesore in such a prominent place.
What's scariest is my impression from looking at the site that, well, sure $578,000,000 was ridiculous, but, say, $378,000,000 would not have been.
It's just plain expensive to do things in LA. For example, one reason it took 21 years to get something new up and running on this prime site was first having 15 years of legal wrangling. But that is par for the course in LA. For example, the single finest piece of land in LA County, the old Marineland site in Palos Verdes on a point of land jutting out into the Pacific with 270-degree ocean views, was out of use from 1986, when Marineland closed, until 2008 when the Terranea resort hotel opened there.
There's a widespread conservative assumption that all we need to do is sharpen our pencils and cut out Government Waste. But the problems are more fundamental. Los Angeles is crammed with illegal aliens and their descendants, and educating them in a crowded and thus highly expensive city is extremely expensive.
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34 comments:
Steve,
You're the most interesting blogger in America, but I do hope you take another look at some of those large events you casually label 'conspiracy theories'.
RFK is a pretty easy one. The (still living) coroner who examined RFK's body, the highly respected Dr. Thomas Noguchi, found that the fatal bullet was fired from *behind* Kennedy's ear at a distance of (maximum) three inches.
Every witness says Sirhan was ten feet in *front* of RFK. Sirhan was the dupe.
Lost recordings recently found by a British journalist also show that Sirhan somehow fired 13 bullets from a gun that held only eight.
You have a lot of the world figured out, Steve, but the CIA really is bigger and more important than you give them credit for.
This seems like a perfect topic for your next book. Somebody else is already jumping on this opportunity no doubt but you have the inside track I would think.
You have a quantitative bent and people will want to know where a half billion dollars went. You know a lot about illegal aliens and you have been writing about education now for the last couple years.
Hell this high school probably has a soccer team too.
That sound you hear is opportunity knocking.
Albertosaurus
For some reason, I never see estimates of what percentage of the student body at this $578,000,000 will be the children (or grandchildren) of illegal aliens.
Yeah, I know. Answer: A honking big percentage.
I am always astounded by these per kid spending figures. If we just gave the cash to the parents, four kids could pool together, spend 20,000 on supplies/space and pay one teacher 100,000. I would think you'd be able to find a very good teacher for $100k/year. Scales of economy should make even better scenarios when pooling resources, but waste increases and money gets lost on buildings, law suits, staff, pensions, healthcare, etc.
that art school building looks cool...
Los Angeles is crammed with illegal aliens and their descendants, and educating them in a crowded and thus highly expensive city is extremely expensive.
I think you meant to say that pretending to educate them is extremely expensive.
I liked the picture of the school and the cathedral, looming over the poor motorists who drive down 101. Two ugly, modernist monstrosities, one pretending to be about education, the other pretending to be about God.
I never see estimates of what percentage of the student body at this $578,000,000 will be the children (or grandchildren) of illegal aliens.
There's a grade 3-8 school LAUSD school called LA Leadership Academy right next to the new school.
Its ethnic/racial makeup is (reportedly):
82% Hispanic
10% African American
5% Asian
1% White
The neighborhood has a lot more than 5% Asians (~28% according to ZIPskinny). I wonder if they send their kids to private schools, or avoid living there if they have school-aged children.
Oh right anon, because the CIA mysteriously sought to kill RFK, because the evil "Man" sought to keep world peace from breaking out ... by killing Cold Warrior RFK-
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The thing is, with most White women now delaying childbirth considerably, or not having them at all (TFR is reportedly in your article IIRC 1.4 ?? for California White women) ...
Well there is considerable support for spending money on other people's children. Particularly if you don't have any of your own.
This is only accentuated by the belief that women have that they will undoubtedly have "beautiful" daughters who won't really need to worry about being among a lot of Mexican immigrants at school, or "sexy/dominant" sons who go to private school courtesy of the Master of the Universe they plan to marry. It is the rough analog of the astonishing number of young Black men who plan on a career in the NFL or NBA.
As you've noted, Mexicans don't vote much even in California. Someone had to push that bond issue for the Taj MaSchool. That someone generally means "nice White ladies." I don't see that dynamic changing any time soon.
If that school were in New York instead of Los Angeles it would have taken twice as long to build and cost three times as much.
Peter
West Contra Costa County, like LA county, has a dwindling supply of blacks being offset by a growing supply of Mexican anchor offspring. They recently made their presence known last Spring by gang raping one of the few white girls left in the Richmond High School. Drag races and tit-for-tat drive-by murders are the feature entertainment of Saturday nights.
And like LA, the West County school district likes to build large. They have shoved through over a billion dollars in bonds to build such eyesores as El Cerrito High School, the $120 million dollar copy of the Des Moines, IA, airline terminal, complete with flashing LED Times Square announcement board. And the $50 million Lavonya de Jeans (LaVonya de WHO??) Middle School, a tinker toy what's-it with gull wing appendages which looks like Robert Moses rejected it for the 1964 Worlds Fair. It's so utterly hideous here's the only picture of it on the web: http://www.publicschoolreview.com/screenshots/12304.jpg. Try Google Earth for more details. And then there is the Lord of the Rings inspired $50 million rebuild of Harding Elementary, with its sloppy curvilinear facade, badly stuccoed and painted drab green.
And for these delightful showcases of academic brilliance, property taxes will double in the next ten years. To make a profit, the many fine local fast food restaurants will have to duplex and sell their parking lots.
According to the CA Dept of Education, Los Angeles Leadership Academy is 84% Hispanic, 43% English-learner and 35% reclassified former English-learner. And this is a high school.
The RFK school will probably be as bad or worse.
Marineland. Palos Verde. The cliffs.
God, I loved Marineland. Bubbles the Whale. Knotts Berry Farm. Disneyland. Some remaining orange groves. Neat and well cared-for stucco homes that exhibited pride of ownership. The summer...driving 8 hours from Northern California down Highway 99through the searing heat of the Central Valley in a Ford Fairlane with no air conditioner with my father, a maniacal New York City driver at the wheel, the windows rolled down on my behalf because no matter how hot it was both my parents just kept smoking one cigarette after another...ah, Southern California was just what it was advertised--a fragrant fantasyland, a place of dreams for this child and her working class parents.
So sad that it has disappeared.
Maybe all childhoods felt that way?
One can only imagine the message being sent to Mexican and Central Americans. Go to America, legally or illegally, and they will build your kids the greatest schools money can buy. In fact, they will build elementary and high schools that are nicer and better equipped than most universities.
This is like adding current to the electromagnet that is already drawing them here.
To the Anonymous who said, "West Contra Costa County, like LA county, has a dwindling supply of blacks being offset by a growing supply of Mexican anchor offspring."
To my everlasting disgust, those West Contra Costa blacks have moved to my East Contra Costa community. The migration began a few years ago when housing prices were sky high and when our second high school, a large, "state of the art" high school was built here.
Developers built, built, built at prices that seemed reasonable to those to the west of us. Big homes. Speculators bought and sold, bought and sold. Section 8 vouchers became common.
The new high school itself was a magnet for families who thought they'd escape the poor Richmond (and Oakland) schools. Of course, we all know what happened. No one actually used the change to get a new start in life.
The migration simply destroyed three feeder schools, two high schools, a myriad of new neighborhoods, and a whole town.
Now, we have white flight. I'm joining the flight.
whiskey said, The thing is, with most White women now delaying childbirth considerably, or not having them at all.
Whiskey I got this off another blog but I thought it was an interesting discussion. The argument that folks like you use is that we have immigration because our natives are not reproducing. Other people are saying that it is the influx of numerous immigrants that is causing the natives not to reproduce.
From Larry Auster, Immigration does not “replenish” a country’s population, it replaces it. American history is instructive on this point. Between 1790 and 1830, a period in which the total number of immigrants was about 385,000, or under 10,000 per year, the U.S. population increased by an astonishing nine million (from 3.9 million in 1790 to 12.9 million in 1830). This tripling was due mainly to the natural increase of the 1790 population, not to immigration.
I would add that from 1920 to 1960, an immigration restriction period, the US population increased by 68 percent. From 1970 until 2010, the ridiculous open-borders bum rush, the population increased by 52 percent. Keep in mind the open borders period came while the post war baby boom was still going on.
What part has mass immigration played in curtailing the birth rate among the natives?
"I am always astounded by these per kid spending figures. If we just gave the cash to the parents, four kids could pool together, spend 20,000 on supplies/space and pay one teacher 100,000. I would think you'd be able to find a very good teacher for $100k/year. Scales of economy should make even better scenarios when pooling resources, but waste increases and money gets lost on buildings, law suits, staff, pensions, healthcare, etc."
Good point,They could just go to one of the houses in the neighborhood and set up a "school" in the living room. The teacher could come for the full day.
We need to rethink education in this country along with immigration,health care etc..
Chris said..."According to the CA Dept of Education, Los Angeles Leadership Academy is 84% Hispanic."
Yes and at this same "Leadership Academy", the percentage of participants in free or reduced-price lunches is 100 while the percentage of participants in the gifted and talented education program is 0.
Apparently self-parody is a bi-coastal phenomenon.
If we revoke the anchor baby birthright citizenship, can we retroactively take away citzenship from the children of illegals? I think that'd go a long way to getting this country back on track.
By the way, if you live in Arizona...... Please, PLEASE, PLEASE!!! vote for JD Hayworth. No way can we win if we have 6 more years of McAmnesty.
Steve
The illegal aliens are not forcing LAUSD to spend 578 million on a public school. Sure they may be looting the emergency rooms etc. But you continue to be blinded by your mild support of public sector unions who are the real culprits in the state budget crises across the country.
One more thing about that LA Leadership Academy. It was founded Hollywood scriptwriter, ACLU lawyer and member of the "Chicago Seven" defense team, Roger Lowenstein.
I suppose it's but another way for him to say "FU" to the goy.
What percentage of the student body will be illegals/anchor babies is one question. The next question is what percentage of the cost will be paid by the white population? When whites become a minority they'll still be expected to subsidize everyone else, to educate and house and provide health care to all the non-whites. The extravagance of this school in a state that's supposedly broke probably represents a last minute looting frenzy before the lights go out.
"To my everlasting disgust, those West Contra Costa blacks have moved to my East Contra Costa community."
Yeah, folks in WC joked about commuter crack dealers who bought McMansions in Antioch, commuting from Pittsburg to Richmond by BART to set up street corner pharmacies in their old neighborhoods. The card tables were a nice touch.
Perhaps a constitutional amendment banning multiple choice tests would do the trick of ridding Americans of these meddlesome behemoths. If a century and a half of this mandatory schooling nonsense hasn't made people capable even of raising and teaching their own kids, it clearly does not work.
The Ambassador Hotel is known amongst the cognescenti as the place where the annual AVN pornographic video awards were held, and were such luminaries of the 'industry' in its golden age such as Seka, Ginger Lyn, Peter North etc, would be seen in all their resplendence receiving 'golden phalluses' at the annual bash.
I've read that virtually the only big money spinning industry left in SoCal today is pornography - the region spews out filth by the ton, polluting the internet and corrupting the youth of the world.It's reasonable to assume that the porn biz is a major tax contributor to the LAUSD, contributing a big part of the absurd $500 million price tag to the (90% + minority) school.
Well, that's an awful lot of sore whats-its that the video whores of the San Fernando Valley had to endure to pamper mestizo youth.
"Well, that's an awful lot of sore whats-its that the video whores of the San Fernando Valley had to endure to pamper mestizo youth."
Psst. An increasing number of porn starlets in the valley ARE mestizo youth, perhaps all LAUSD alumnae. The more popular ones without tattoos, piercings, cellulite, stretch marks, or butter faces can make as much money as a plumber. The guys in these films are ex con with Aryan Nation tattoos. Which all sorta makes sense. The Mexican Mafia, flush with narco-dollars in need of laundering, are the new porn financiers in town. The Aryans are their allies against the blacks behind bars, and once white gang members get out they gotta stay employed or their parole officers drop a dime on them. And there's no shortage of feral teen Latinas easily talked into humiliating themselves in front of an audience that would be the envy of Univision.
In a generation or so the vibrancy and native glories of the immigrant's children will be lost as they sink into brown underclass mediocrity. Asians will continue to imitate white gentry, or should I say the memory of white gentry as the whites will have fled.
My take on the USA is that it is fated to be gated, a nation of enclaves more or less simmering with hostility towards each other. I would use the word "ungovernable" but I won't because it has been the government's decision to produce this state of affairs. I prefer to think that we are entering a state of nature red in tooth and claw.
You're right that LA is both expensive and, by American standards, crowded. But the two have nothing to do with one another. LA is nowhere near crowded enough that crowding causes high expenses. Red tape, lawsuits and man-made factors cause the expense.
In places with similar population density that allow easy construction, places like Dallas and Houston, a new school will cost you about $100 a square foot and kids cost about $6,000 a year to educate. You could have that, too, if you chose to change your laws.
Of course, the people of LA will not change their laws, except to make existing problems worse, so I suppose you are correct to write about the delays and costs as immutable laws of nature rather than things that can be changed -- but conservatives are also right when they say it's just wasteful government spending. Cut spending at LAPSD to $6k per kid and the area becomes a lot more livable.
Whiskey: TFR is reportedly in your article IIRC 1.4 ?? for California White women...
the belief that women have that they will undoubtedly have "beautiful" daughters...
As you've noted, Mexicans don't vote much even in California. Someone had to push that bond issue for the Taj MaSchool. That someone generally means "nice White ladies." I don't see that dynamic changing any time soon.
Define "any time soon".
This California Caucasian TFR of 1.4 has been on-going for about thirty-five years now [since about 1975].
Give it another decade or two, and all those "nice White ladies" and their "beautiful" daughters will have un-bred themselves right out of existence.
[Indeed, in 2010, almost four decades after the beginning of the collapse in blue-state Caucasian fertility, status-post Griswold & Roe, you could plausibly argue that the Blue Staters have ALREADY un-bred themselves right out of existence.]
>examples of abuse and extravagance. for example, the huge sloping ornamental lawn . . .
That's practical. Cops like a big greensward around poor neighborhoods so they can easily nab hell-raisers.
A pleasant setting for Juan to spend the next 2½ years not learning math.
Developers built, built, built at prices that seemed reasonable to those to the west of us. Big homes. Speculators bought and sold, bought and sold. Section 8 vouchers became common.
Here is the same fact, expressed in orthodox language:
http://fackintruth.typepad.com/blog/2008/08/white-surburbs-go-ghetto-fabulous-in-antioch-california.html
The writer speaks her mind, yet stays within the electric-fenced bounds of American Sharia Law.
But that Section 8 population must increase! Enter "strategic litigation".
http://www.impactfund.org/index.php?cat_id=116
one pretending to be about education, the other pretending to be about God
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feral teen Latinas easily talked into humiliating themselves in front of an audience that would be the envy of Univision
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the immigrant's children will be lost as they sink into brown underclass mediocrity... a state of nature red in tooth and claw
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It's kinda ironic [and more than a little surrealistic] the extent to which this thread reads like a realization of [the real-life prequel to?] the vision of Idiocracy.
I don't understand why you Americans let your children go to these hell-holes. Surely illiteracy is better than being catechized by the Great Satan.
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