In case you missed Steve Lopez’s column yesterday, it’s a good one. Here’s how it began:
“What is it?” Kelly Charles asked as he walked to his job as a custodian in downtown Los Angeles and gazed up at a rather odd construction project. “A roller coaster?”As I wandered the neighborhood, other guesses were:
A ski jump.
A toboggan run.
A water slide.
What’s got everyone talking is the odd-looking tower that rises 140 feet above the 101 Freeway, directly across from the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. The futuristic metallic edifice, with a wraparound spiral Dr. Seuss would love, is not part of a theme park. It is the signature adornment on a new arts-oriented public high school that will cost roughly $230 million.
(Most everyone I know guessed an escaped ride from Six Flags Magic Mountain.)
Evidently the high school was going to be an ordinary campus until Eli Broad decided it should be a state of the art design monument, as the Times and the Daily News reported in 2003. To that end, Broad hooked the district up with his friend the $800,000 designer. And pretty soon the water slide wonder tower (or whatever) was in the works.
All of this would have been fine if Eli was footing some of the bill. But he wasn’t. (He offered to loan the district some money, which is not exactly the help that was needed.)
Still, way back then the Superintendent Roy Romer said that the school would still just cost the approved $73.2 million.
And then the cost ballooned to $230 million.
The tower rises from a 950-seat performing arts theater, and this part of the project alone is priced at $49 million, writes Lopez.
Soooo-o-o-o-o-o. in an era when neighborhood schools are badly in need of repair, classes are catastrophically overcrowded, and the state is planning to slash 10 percent out of public education across the board, the district is spending an extra $100 million for this fancy design?
This is not giving us confidence in the Sup and the LAUSD board. Priorities, people!
As Lopez points out, the toboggan run school design boondoggle is not David Brewer’s doing. But he has done nothing to fix or ameliorate the situation.
Calling Ray Cortines. We are ready for some sane and sensible leadership.
A remarkably ugly building, tower aside.
But, look at all the jobs that await the art students who graduate from the school. The job market is crying out for art majors.
Actually, Woody, given the proximity of so much of the entertainment/music industry – not to mention SoCal as a significant center for (as we see here, at it’s worst) trendy architecture and related design pursuits – a music and arts secondary school in LA makes a lot of sense from a career-prep perspective. (Although if they were really serious about integrating job skills with arts education, they’d have a special “producers” track for the most obnoxius, least talented kids.)
Just like business schools get significant funding of gifts from former business students, why isn’t Hollywood giving back to its schools or chipping into its “farm system?”
Hollywood doesn’t need to create “trade schools” at the high school level — there are plenty of colleges and grad schools which turn out very bright students, and these schools DO get intimate interaction with the industry (UCLA, USC, and above all the American Film Institute Conservatory, a grad school). And the downtown location makes this waste of money even more of a boondoggle, as a magnet. This really is just a monument to Billionaire Eli Broad’s ego, who wanted something to match the look of his other developments (which he’s pulled out of, too, leaving it to Middle East oil money to finish) and Disney Hall — to make it appear like Downtown is a real, thriving mini-city, complete with a futuristic school. (Built at the expense of the rest of the district, and in defiance of a successful trend toward smaller community schools.)
Broad also backed out of a promise to donate art to LACMA, but not before getting them to name the new contemporary art building after him — where his art is now just loaned. Leaving LACMA to spin this all as a positive somehow, but actually leaving many other major donors fuming.
Among other examples, Woody, Lucas donated $175 million to USC.
“the district is spending an extra $100 million for this fancy design”
Someone should be shot. Really. Clearly a disgraceful boondoggle in already over-burdened problem-riddled school system that goes beyond any credible excuse for grandiose overspending and ridiculous cost overruns. I have zero tolerance for this stuff. That said, I’m not dismissive – like Woody – of secondary arts and music magnets. They’re an excellent option for some kids and there’s no reason why they should be a drain on district finances, any more than any other magnet school. Also, I’m curious – is this a new campus or a completely new concept ? Hasn’t LA had an arts magnet school for years ? I’d be very surprised if that weren’t the case.
I would venture – and I’m a graduate of one – that the worst things about films these days are film schools: lots of people get turned out with great technical skills and precious little to say. Much of the basic technical work you can learn in a relatively short time. Film is a rgeat subject to have as a minor course of study, but as a major it should be combined with something else IMHO.
Lucas donated $175 million to USC.
Holy Cow! That’s a lot of money. Now, I see the income and estate tax implications, but I believe that Lucas had sincere motives.
If someone in City Hall got off his/her rear ends and solicited funds from the Hollywood crowd, the taxpayers could be spared. But, I guess it’s easier to tax and spend rather than put out any efforts to raise outside money.
I’m beginning to understand that there may be more of a market for arts students in southern California versus more down-to-Earth parts of the nation, so maybe this money won’t be completely wasted–except for the stupid and overpriced architectural design. I bet Disney spent a lot less on Space Mountain.
I just read on another blog, and Celeste can check it out if she cares, that the site for this giant slide thing was bought from an investment group that included Broad for $90 million, and his stake was 20% — he’d spent a lot getting Genethia Hayes elected, and she helped push this through ALLEGEDLY. Although the intentions were good, to provide an alternative to kids at the OLD Belmont, whose enrollment exceeded some 35oo kids, many others bused as far as the West Valley. (The NEW one has been facing huge controversy, as it’s allegedy the site of a toxic waste dump, too big, and hugely over budget. L A Weekly writes about another school in East Hollywood that’s being built on a site alleged to be toxic, too. While schools further west have had no new renovations even for decades…) But now with the NEW Belmont going up anyway, some 2000 kids will be bused TO downtown.
First off, as a disclaimer, I was a part of the team that is responsible for delivering new schools to LA Unified, so let’s get that out of the way.
The arguments about existing school conditions, budget cuts and the oft touted teacher salaries are a total red herring argument. The local bond dollars and state funds allocated to the building of new schools are voter approved for just that purpose, to build new schools. The sad state of education that the district finds itself in today due to underpaid teachers cannot be alleviated in any way by bond dollars for new school construction and the new school building program in no way sucks funds out of teachers salaries as general district funds do not go into the building program. In fact, bond dollars are paying existing district staff to serve the facilities program, alleviating the burden on general funds.
You could also argue that more schools = more teachers and there is now a better job atmosphere for young, talented educators; this will be the next wailing of the Los Angeles newspapers, just watch. There will be a lot more attention paid to the quality of education now that tens of thousands of students no longer walk to a neighborhood school to get bussed up to an hour away and the student to teacher ratios go down and extra school days get added to the calendar. Once extra curricular activities and smaller class sizes get thrown in the mix you’ll likely see the retention rates go back up and the focus will b eon education again.
Another point to be aware of, at the time Romer promised the school to cost under $100Million NO ONE had any idea, least of all Romer, that construction costs were going to explode beyond what anyone had ever seen. Where most increases in construction cost inflation were averaging 5% a year, the LA area was seeing a 25% increase per year due to factors like private and public sector development and materials cost; rising demand makes for rising prices. While the $230Million cost may seem excessive (and make no mistake, that is an expensive auditorium), there are few high schools that will open for their doors for less than that in the end, it’s indicative of the market, not the district.
The LAUSD is a bureaucratic and political automaton at times and there are wastes and bad decisions made, hopefully often for the right reasons, it seems inescapable. I do not feign to understand all the political machinations in making a deal like this happen, but painting with too broad a brush does a disservice to a program which is effectively providing new schools to a community that has needed them for decades.