Lars Larson: $450M each for 3 high schools?

By Lars Larson,

Your kids may not be able to read or write or do simple math, but if they attend Portland public schools, they’ll soon sit in the most expensive classrooms in America.

A ballot measure allowing borrowing of more than 1.8 billion got approved by just over 8 percent of voters.

Turn-out totaled only 16 percent even with automatic registration of every eligible voter, plus foreigners and illegals.

A 15 percent majority carried the day.

This, in a school system where just about half of all the kids test proficient in math and reading.

And these 450-million dollar schoolhouses are doozies…built to hold 17-hundred kids even though those buildings currently house about two-thirds of that number and forecasts project dropping enrollment.

As my friends at Willamette Week have documented for months, other similar-size schools have been built in places like Denver for literally hundreds of millions less.

So, we have a district that ran itself 40 million into the red fulfilling promises to unionized teachers and now billions in debt so construction companies are happy.

But they’ll surely have some pretty buildings.

As for all that unnecessary space for hundreds of non-existent students…maybe they can house the homeless.

That’s the Rose City Rap. Join me at noon on KXL for 4 hours of Honestly provocative talk. I’m Lars Larson