Talking Benches for an Impoverished School District

On the inside part of the door in every L.A. Unified classroom, there should be a sign that reads “Warning: You are about to leave the sanity of your classroom and enter the Alice in Wonderland world of L.A. Unified.

Any time a L.A. Unified teacher leaves his or her classroom, he or she risks immediate exposure to the District’s highly illogical, twisted, maddening world. LA Unified teachers have become adept in devising coping strategies in response. Many teachers, especially veteran teachers, stay 100% focused on the classroom and ignore all of the District’s dealings- believing that meaningful change can only happen inside the classroom. Others, like those who slow down to watch roadside wrecks, relish seeing the District repeatedly fail and usually trip all over itself. And a few attempt to play an activist role (or some say Sisyphean) and try to change the system in any number of ways. I fall into the last category- not yet ready to concede that the District is beyond hope.

And then I read an article like I saw this morning in the Daily News. And I really wonder…

The gist of the article was that the L.A. Unified School Board had approved an additional $6 million needed to complete the new Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools complex built at the site of the old Ambassador Hotel, where Robert Kennedy was assassinated. The project had already cost the District an astounding $572 million- equating to $135,000 per seat for each of the 4,200 students. An alert Daily News reader noted that the $572 million was more than the GNP of each of 24 countries around the world.

The article also stated that the complex was extraordinarily costly because of expensive add-ons- including “talking benches.” For those not familiar with this indispensable item, I can pass along what I learned today about these benches. Basically, a talking bench is an “informative” bench that has multiple recorded messages. These recorded messages can change according to the positioning of the bench. Some benches have MP3 players, powered by miniature solar panels, so that bench users can “plug in” their headphones and listen to stories, poems, music, etc.

I’m not sure about the exact level of sophistication of the talking benches at the District’s newest complex. What I am sure about is that the $572 million and the talking benches represent yet another example of the upside-down priorities of L.A. Unified. We really have fallen into the rabbit hole.

There are so many things wrong here that it’s hard to know where to begin:

1) Why are we building more schools at a time of sharply declining enrollment? Over the past five years, enrollment in L.A. Unified has dropped by about 100,000 students, or about 15%. Yet we continue to add more and more schools at enormous costs. The last three major schools built by the District cost a whopping $1 billion in total. This has resulted in the paradoxical situation of “crowded classrooms, empty schools.” Classrooms become more and more crowded because of decreases in state funding, as well as more expenditures needed to maintain the fixed costs of the burgeoning number of schools. Schools become more and more empty as enrollment continues to drop at a time when literally dozens of new schools see construction completed. Granted, some of the construction began before the burst of the demographic bubble. But the District has done little to effectively manage the situation.

2) Spending $572 million (or $135,000 per seated student) is obscene: At a time when so many LA Unified schools are in disrepair, the idea of spending this much money is simply incredible. At Fairfax High School, where I teach, we have so many basic physical problems associated with the aging facility: lack of heating in winter, lack of air conditioning and overheated classrooms during the early Fall and Spring, broken communication systems, 15 year old desks trashed with graffiti, etc. Where are the priorities when we fail to address basic needs of our schools? We just need classrooms where we can teach, not hyper-modern architectural wonders costing half a billion $$.

And then I read later in the article that Board Member Steve Zimmer , in discussing the newest complex, says, “if the true cost were $250,000 a seat, it would be worth every penny.” Worth every penny? Doesn’t the Board realize the opportunity cost of spending money? Every dollar spent on a certain project is a dollar not spent on something else. I have a hard time believing that anyone could credibly argue that the $572 million spent on a new educational complex is the very best use of taxpayer money. Yes, there often are separate pots of money that cannot be comingled. But at the end of the day, the District is certainly not spending precious taxpayer money on the highest priority items.


3) How does a talking bench help our students? While the talking benches may be a drop in the bucket of total spending, they are a metaphor for the way our District operates. When the District plans its spending, does it really ask the critical questions: “Is this the best use of money to support our students’ education?” “What are we sacrificing by spending money in this way?” “How exactly will students benefit from this spending?” I doubt it.

4) What message does the School District send when it spends $572 million on a new facility and allows for spending on talking benches? Recently, L.A. voters failed to approve a parcel tax that would have provided about $92 million a year to L.A. Unified. While the money would not have been spent on construction or talking benches, how is voter perception shaped with this kind of excessive and frivolous spending? L.A. voters are savvy. L.A. Unified can forget about any further parcel taxes until it gets its own financial house in order.


Final note: As it turned out, talking benches have some tough competition for frivolous spending. Later in the Daily News article, we find that L.A. Unified spends $74,000 a year on carwashes (i.e., taking District vehicles to commercial car wash facilities). The good news is that L.A. Unified expects to have a plan in place by Sept. 1, 2010 on how to reduce car washing expenses going forward.

Talking benches. Crowded classrooms, empty schools. $572 million for just one school complex. $74,000 for car washes.

I can only think of Alice’s pleading after she fell into the rabbit hole: “It would be so nice if something made sense for a change.”