Just Say NO!

Be outraged by this. It should not be tolerated. Everybody involved should lose their job, from the superintendent to the school board to the various levels of government that approved the bond requests to the financial institutions that underwrote the bonds. It is government run amok.

Broke District Builds Luxury Campus

There used to be a joke about two women meeting after years of separation. One tells her life stories while the other responds with interjections of "Fantastic!" After nearly an hour of this, the first woman takes a break and decides to jab at the background of the second by asking, "So, you went to that fancy finishing school. What did they teach you there?"

The reply, "That refined women say 'Fantastic' instead of bulls***!"

Apparently the WSJ author likes the phrase "There's no accounting for taste."

Case in point:

Mr. Rubin admits that the Roybal Center project was "a tremendous screw-up" that "should have been studied closer beforehand." The project was abandoned for several years, only to be recommenced when community activists demanded that the school be built at whatever cost necessary in order to show respect for the neighborhood's Latino children, many of whom were attending an overcrowded Belmont High School.

The Roybal center now ranks in the bottom third of schools with similar demographics on state tests, while Belmont High ranks in the top third. But even though many Roybal kids can't read or do math, at least they have a dance studio with cushioned maple floors and a kitchen with a restaurant-quality pizza oven.

When someone can state that a school should be "built at whatever cost necessary" to "show respect for the neighborhood's Latino children," you must stumble for a moment. When the project results in a school with good pizza but illiterate students you've got a problem.