Where is the outrage, Aiken style.

[Kahns Krazy]

I see in the paper today that Aiken will be torn down and replaced at a cost of $29.3 million. Current enrollment is 744 students.

Where are all the people crying about how this investment only benefits a select few. What about those who insist investing in high crime neighborhoods is a waste? Where is the outrage?

[stophorseabuse]

Out of date schools are a massive problem for teachers. The move from a chalk board to a smartboard is a huge breakthrough for classrooms, and has totally changed the dynamic of student engagement. It is amazing what one little piece of technology can do.

Most teacher's would happily take an update in resources and support over 100.00 dollar a month raises.

On a side note, I would like to see kids offered online learning. I wouldn't even mind the cost of it being provided in exchange for consolidating schools. It would provide an alternate setting to those who need it, lure trouble makers to fail out without dragging those who care down along the way, and it provides clear documentation of why a student fails. The bad seeds would slit their own throats. It also gives the large core of new teachers highly trained in technology a way to use their talents that would not result in as many teachers leaving the field.

I have a lot more on that. Yes I know there are challenges, but those holes would not be any worse than the holes we have now.

[MADXSTER]

If you look around, all the public schools are being torn down and rebuilt.

I was wondering what was going on about a year and a half ago when someone told me that the state/or fed was paying something like 40% of the cost of new buildings leaving the district 60%. These monies were not for fixing up old schools but for building new ones. Apparently there is a time frame in order for the district to qualify for these monies.

Thus, districts are jumping all over this new found money and building rather than renovating.

[JimmyTwoTimes37]

I wonder what Chris Smitherman thinks about all this and what Kahn's said. Oh thats right, he's wrapped up in the Chris Bortz controversy now...The man simply cannot lead a life without drama - possibly due to the fact he went to SCPA and majored in drama at BGSU

http://www.citybeat.com/cincinnati/article-23380-what-really-happened-in-mount-adams.html

http://c0013764.cdn1.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/x2_6028bdc

http://c0013764.cdn1.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/x2_6028764

[xeus]

Yawn.

[Snipe]

Here is some info on public school construction costs, provided by the 35th Annual Official Education Construction Report (http://asumag.com/Construction/planning/education-construction-report-200905/index4.html)done by American School & University Magazine.

For High Schools
Cost/Square Foot $154
Cost/Student $23,125
Square Feet/Student 150

Here is an Aiken cost comparison
Cost: $29,300,000
Square Feet: 157,000
Cost/Square Foot: $186.62
Cost/Student: $39,381.72
Square Feet/Student: 211

It appears that the cost per square foot, cost per student and the square feet per student are all well above the national mean.

Look at the cost per student. If this school was built to the national mean of $23,125 per student instead of $39k, the price tag would have been 17.2 million dollars. You would have saved over 12 million dollars. I think a lot of money is made on these contracts.

Since the schools are public I am sure excessive government regulation comes into play in the price. Prevailing wages and unions are also going to take their bite, and public schools love unions. And of course minority contract requirements will be cost drivers as well. Private school construction would not have to deal with many of these cost drivers, and as a result it wouldn't surprise me if you could build a better school at half the price.

And lets face this too: this is Aiken we are talking about. Aiken is a bad school. Many kids drop out. Will tearing down the existing school, building a 30 million dollar facility and then inviting the same kids back really make a material difference? I have my doubts.

Jay P. Greene weighs in:

Why Are School Construction Costs So High? (http://jaypgreene.com/2008/10/27/why-are-school-construction-costs-so-high/)


By comparison, the median cost per square foot to build a three story factory in 2007 ranged from $83 in Winston-Salem to $136 in NY City, with most major metro areas hovering around $100 per square foot. Schools cost almost double what it costs to build a three-story factory and even more than what it costs to build houses.

Why does it cost so much? Part of the answer is that schools are more likely to be mandated to have Project Labor Agreements (PLAs), which require the use of unionized construction workers. Schools built with PLAs cost about $30 more per square foot according to studies conducted in Connecticut and Massachusetts.

Some of the higher cost can be attributed to gold-plating in the school building codes. In Florida, for example, the increase in school building code requirements following Hurricane Andrew added $500,000 to the cost of each elementary school and $2 million for each high school over a decade ago. Every school was expected to withstand 150 mph winds rather than 121 mph and to double the thickness of the concrete roof to 4 inches. Of course, it’s always hard to argue against the safety of school buildings, but remember that kids are not in schools when hurricanes hit. Schools are usually closed a day or two before a hurricane is expected. It’s true that schools may be used as shelters, but not every school needs to be a shelter. Requiring that every school meet the highest standard for any building is a way to exploit our concern for kids’ safety to drive school construction costs up.

In addition to the price per square foot, there is also the question of how many square feet we need. The average new school has between 100 and 158 square feet per student, depending on the grade level. But state requirements for square footage are increasing based on the argument that “schools need more space than they did 20 years ago.” That may be, but some states, such as Minnesota, require as many as 200 to 320 sq. ft. per student for small high schools. The Har-Ber high school that I described in my last post has 198.25 square feet per student. At about 200 sq. ft. per student we could teach a class of 25 kids in a 5,000 square foot mansion. And at an average cost of $23,873 per student for new high school construction, we could build that 5,000 square foot mansion for those 25 students for around $600K.

Not bad. Now if only we could teach students well-enough so that they could earn their own $600K house.

I like his thought experiment at the end, converting the square footage for 25 kids into a mansion.

At Aiken, 25 students (at 211 sq ft per) would constitute 5,275 sqare foot mansion, and at $39,382 per student that mansion would cost $984,543. Maybe the neighborhood would look better if we built 30 sprawling million dollar mansions on the property and educated the kids there.

I think the best answer is to end the government monopoly in education.

[Porkopolis]

I think the best answer is to end the government monopoly in education.

How can anyone who has every lived in catholic school dominated Cincinnati say that with a straight face?

[Snipe]

How can anyone who has every lived in catholic school dominated Cincinnati say that with a straight face?

Catholic Schools do not dominate Cincinnati, government schools have more students. Nationally close to 90% of students are indoctrinated in government schools.

I just said that with a straight face.

[Juice]

How can anyone who has every lived in catholic school dominated Cincinnati say that with a straight face?

And the fact that some of the Cincinnati Public Schools do so poorly with families paying taxes to them but enrolling their kids in catholic schools is laughable.

[stophorseabuse]

Snipe, to be fair to find true cost you have to divide the cost per student by 10 or so (at least) to account for the fact the building will house more than the current student population over it's lifetime.

I have finally figured out a BIG reason so many schools are failing AND overspending. It hit me the other day that a schools administrative positions could pay for about 2 teachers each, at least.

In addition, the only way for the best teacher's to improve their career is to go into administration. That is INSANE that the system rewards great teachers by taking them AWAY from students. The high dollar employees should be effective teachers. Most schools teacher's could handle (and do handle) a large chunk of administrative duties. We are already told to handle discipline ourselves, but we are given a laundry list of what we don't have the authority to do. Just give the teachers administrative authority of discipline. We would not only accept the responsibility, it would make the job EASIER.

We also tend to do all the paperwork before submitting it to administration. If we already completed it what is the point of the middle man? Attendance is the same way. Teacher's could just enter it right into the database.

We are already on all kinds of commitees that don't actually do anything. They are just for show. Let them handle things like school attendance, discipline, and grade records.

I'm not suggesting eliminating administration jobs. However, the administration jobs should be lower paying than the teachers. The most talented should be encouraged to teach. The teachers make the bus move, the administrators handle maintenance. Administration positions could all be 25-35K/yr jobs that are subservient to the teachers.

And to the super conservative, YES, teacher's should recieve performance based pay, and tenure should be eliminated. However, the teacher should also be judged on the progress throughout a year. Not a random standardized cut off line. Mrs K from rich suburban school shouldn't make more because her kids were smart enough to pass tests when the year began and failed to show meaningful gains, than Mr. X of the ghetto who averaged 40% gains among his students who attended at least 85% of classes, but still only had 10% meet the one size fits all line.

This just makes too much sense though.

[Kahns Krazy]

Snipe, to be fair to find true cost you have to divide the cost per student by 10 or so (at least) to account for the fact the building will house more than the current student population over it's lifetime..

True, but the same is to be said for the national average as well, right?

Still, 29 million over 744 students. Let's assume the school will be useful for 30 years. It's also relatively reasonable to assume 2.5% of construction costs for maintenance per year. That puts the 30 year total cost at $50,750,000 for facilities only - before we add in the cost for teachers, utilities, programming, etc. 744 students over a 4-year program means on average we are graduating 186 students per year, or 5,580 in the next 30 years. $50,750,000 divided by 5,580 is $9,062 in facilities costs alone for each graduating student. For Aiken High School.

Add in the teachers, transportation, utilities, administration, furniture and fixtures. At some point, the kids would be better off with a trust fund and no education.

[Snipe]

Great point Kahns. It is hard to justify the amount that we spend on government education.

It isn't just the buildings, it is the teachers and their unions too.

We just can't afford that stuff. We tear down a good school building to build another one for 30 million like we have the money. It wasn't like an earthquake happened or a tornado came through, we decided to tear down a working building and replace it for 30 million dollars. And this is Aiken we are talking about, many of those kids will soon be incarcerated.

We will be paying for that too.

Cincinnati public schools are bankrupt, and they also suck as a parent. They really do suck.


I think health care reform will eventually look like our government schools. One track sucks, but the private track is much better.