Expensive Land
Education and Big Construction
By Daniel Muniz

Education bureaucrats love to build schools and oftentimes, there is no such thing as a construction project that is too big or too expensive. In addition, urban sprawl and burgeoning populations has created ample opportunities for school districts to greatly increase their infrastructure and operating costs, which translates into bigger budgets. And the more schools, the better. And that also goes for football stadiums and other big-ticket items. And everybody benefits, like school personnel, politicians, and developers.

Everybody except the taxpayer.

In the school district that I pay my property taxes to, the Claudia Taylor "Lady Bird Johnson" High School is currently under construction with a staggering price tag of $70 million, which excludes any additional cost overruns. Sticker shock doesn’t seem to faze school board officials even though this district, like many others across the country, will eventually clamor for larger budgets and more taxes to cover normal expenses like teaching.

The construction manager of this new high school, Gary Sullivan says:

And due to the rocky nature of the topography of this site, three additional months have also been added to the project. In fact, the district has to excavate through 18 feet of this tough terrain in order to build the school there. Not only is this high school an expensive construction venture, it has also turned into a huge costly earthmoving endeavor because of the land itself.

As for the rest of the booming suburbs near where I live, developers are simply acquiring flatter, cheaper, and more suitable acreage to build subdivisions, office complexes, and retail strip centers.

Unlike the government, private companies run their operations, well, like a business. They have absolutely no interest in making poor expensive business decisions since they are accountable to their owners. But this “business” common sense rarely filters down to the education bureaucrats since they have the taxpayer as a source of almost unlimited revenue.

Sadly, voters in my area have only shown tepid feeble responses from time to time.

But they definitely have not shown enough outrage to stop the spending spree on a project like this or similar ones. And what is so unfortunate about these kind of extravagant construction projects of this magnitude is that Texas is also part of the so-called “Robin Hood” school-financing plan. Not only do my taxes have to be large enough to finance over-priced boondoggles like this high school, but they also has to be big enough cover all the other poor school districts’ boondoggles as well.

And the developers love it.

They get to build bigger structures with bigger price tags at taxpayer’s expense. They also like the big budgets and they rarely have to worry about the cost overruns because a school has to get built regardless of the cost. Not very many districts here in Texas or in other parts of the country hold developers very accountable to their original contracts.

Unfortunately, the voters don’t hold the school boards very accountable either.

In fact, it is quite commonplace in the suburbs where I live in for a brand new elementary school to be completed and then have portables trucked in for additional classrooms when the school year opens. The portables then galvanize the education bureaucrats that more schools are needed because there are not enough permanent classrooms for all the students.

It is totally irrelevant that school officials didn’t properly plan out the attendance in the first place. And, it is also irrelevant that student populations fluctuate wildly from year to year especially in the suburbs. In fact, crowded classrooms in the suburbs are often temporary because of the enormous influx of new families moving into the new housing developments.

But here is the real kicker.

Do temporary structures diminish the value of learning?

When I was in high school I had a few classes in a portable but that never prevented me from graduating. In fact, quite a few old-timers will be more than happy to talk about their entire education being in buildings without air conditioning in a hot Texas climate. Before I moved to the suburbs as a teenager, a big portion of my schooling was done in classrooms that did not have air conditioning.

Overall, the priorities of my school district and quite a few others do not match the real objective of providing a solid education to every student. And providing such an education does not necessarily have to be done in a shiny new over-priced building.

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