For $578 Million, We’ll Build You A School

The LA Unified School District may have laid off 3000 teachers, struggles to pay the ones they have on payroll properly, is unable to cope with a huge dropout rate, and faces a $640 million shortfall, but the Robert Kennedy Learning Center is on target to open next month.  After years of litigation and cost overruns, the $578 million project is finished.

The campus, on the grounds of what was once the famous Ambassador Hotel, will house 4200 students from kindergarten through high school.  The campus boasts a park, a memorial to the New York Senator, who was assassinated on the grounds in 1968, a food court, and a state-of-the-art swimming pool.

Some have lauded the innovative campus, saying that the days of 1960s and 1970s cinder block construction are long over.  Having been a product of those cinder block schools in Northern California, I have to wonder whether the expenditure was worth it—after all my peers and I turned out all right.  Auditoriums, cool architecture, and wireless internet are nice, but in the end, was that expense necessary?  Kids need involved parents, competent teachers, and a safe learning environment.  The cost is excessive, even garish.

Some argue that the school is needed to ease overcrowding.  Others justify the price tag by explaining that the campus was built during the peak of the commodity boom.  And technically, the school was built thanks to a $20 billion bond fund, unrelated to any education programs.  But is this really the best use of this land?

After RFK was murdered at the Ambassador, the hotel’s business declined.  Then the neighborhood fell apart as well.  But during the past several years, the Wilshire area has experienced a renaissance, and quite frankly, is one of the most entertaining areas of Los Angeles—and is architecturally fascinating as well, with huge houses of worship and apartment buildings.  The hotel was also a beautiful oasis.  The early Academy Awards ceremonies were hosted at the Ambassador, and it was a lush green space in the middle of a grimy urban neighborhood.  But Los Angeles has a history of dismissing any attempts at historic preservation.  It seems that many of the hotel’s structures could have been preserved, which would have saved costs and waste.  In the end, politics and grandstanding won.  A few token elements remain, but most of this historic property is gone.

I hope the school becomes a model of innovative education in the United States.  But given the LAUSD’s history, the teachers’ unions stubbornness to accept any responsibility or reform, and the wisdom of having 4200 kids confined in this same space, I am dubious.  Politicians have to learn that throwing money at a problem is not the way to go; nor crooning “education” means folks are going to get . . . educated.