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The Players: Billions to Spend The political money behind the rebuilding of the L.A. Community College District.

PART TWO: A new complex riddled with ills that are costly to cure

""I was speechless," says Don Gauthier, who teaches in the Allied Health and Science Center, about the district's celebrating an award recognizing the contractor for its work on the complex. "These are the people who have ... caused us so much agony." "

This wealth transfer to the Unions and their bought and paid for political representatives, is a HUGE reason CA and other states are bankrupt. Close to 50% of all states' budgets go to education (this is not counting the billions they get from the federal government that is "given" (from your pocket) so that they can dictate to the states (and your local school districts) how YOUR children MUST be educated.

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2008: LOS ANGELES [excerpt] A steel tower wrapped in a spiraling ribbon is one of the most striking features of a new arts high school set to open next year.

Its $230 million price tag is another.

The Los Angeles High School for the Visual and Performing Arts, with space for some 1,600 students, most from surrounding low-income neighborhoods, is the architectural crown jewel of the district’s ambitious $20 billion building campaign.

Its spacious studios and 995-seat theater encased in austere concrete are enough to make anybody wish they were a young clarinetist in the district.

Supporters call the five-acre campus a beacon for a reformed educational system, a magnet for good teachers, and a means of raising dismal student performance in the nation’s second-largest school district.

“Do these kids deserve this school? Absolutely,” said Monica Garcia, board president of the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Extravagance?

Critics, however, see the school as a wasteful extravagance for a district where more than a quarter of the 700,000 students remain in temporary classrooms and many existing buildings are in dire need of renovations and repairs...... [end excerpt]