This article on a new middle school next to our flight school has some interesting numbers. Assuming that it is completed within budget, it will cost “$34 million for the 85,000-square-foot, 310-student middle school.” That’s $400 per square foot and $110,000 per student. The latter number is interesting because our “per-pupil spending” numbers typically don’t include the capital costs of school buildings. If we assume a 30-year life for the building (the article says that the discarded school had a major renovation in 1988), and use a 4% interest rate, that would be a $5,725/year mortgage payment. In other words, if the quoted-to-taxpayers amount of spending is $20,000 per year per student (chart; scroll down to find “Lincoln”), the real number for these middle-schoolers is $25,725.
One thing that would be interesting to study is academic achievement during the period in which students were taught in the “nearby temporary facilities” mentioned in the article. What if it turns out that the particulars of the building have no effect at all on academics?
Related:
Phil, if you have an issue with the cost of this school then you are anti-education, an apparently hate kids.
The administrator password on all computers use for the government budget is “4theKids” …
@Tony: This appears to be the exact mentality that got the tax payers screwed over and over; it really shouldn’t cost nearly that much to get the kids educated.
> What if it turns out that the particulars of the building have no effect at all on academics?
I see your rhetorical flourish, and raise you a rant:
Wealthy towns already have great school facilities. But school expenditures support the putative quality of education, which supports property values, which support tax revenues, which support town budgets, which support school expenditures.
The circle shall be unbroken, if you live in the town and care about property values! Which of course, everyone who votes on town budgets, does.
I live in a small town with top rated schools, where 80% of the $50MM town budget goes to the school department. There are people in town management who recognize the absurdity of the situation, but they are powerless to defy the will of the voters. And the school department is convinced they need more. For the kids, I mean, how else will we prepare them for tomorrow’s changing world?
Assuming a thirty-year life for the building is probably an error.
Unless there is a shift in population, I would think that most of the tonier Boston suburbs have stable demographics, and the school should last much longer than that.
I worked (as a teacher) in a system that had schools that were 100+ years old (one celebrated its 150th anniversary the year I moved on), and both had been renovated several times, at significant cost. This was done because the schools were solid older buildings that were revered for the results that their students achieved and for their architectural heritage. They continue to exist as >public< schools and yearly send many graduates your institution as well as other fine universities and colleges in the US, Canada, and the UK.
In a conversation with one of the board engineering staff some time later, he told me that they were attempting to build and renovate schools in stable feeder areas for a much longer lifespan and for much lower costs of operation in terms of maintenance and energy requirements, as well as improved safety for both students and staff (not armour plate so much as having master gas and water shutoffs in the science labs, for example).
You get what you pay for. You're right that kids and teachers probably don't need a palatial environment to be successful, but a clean, spacious, well-lit and properly heated and ventilated environment can't hurt. I doubt that many of your presumably-well-off readers would tolerate the working/learning environment found in many poorly maintained older school buildings.
Gordon: If it is 30 years between major renovations and the renovation costs about as much as a new school, why wouldn’t you use the 30-year life? Renovation in the U.S., at least when done by the government, typically costs in the same neighborhood as starting from scratch (see http://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2015/09/24/longfellow-bridge-repairs-will-now-take-about-as-long-as-the-original-construction/ for where it can cost six times as much, adjusted for inflation).
There is no real property recovery period longer than 40 years under any IRS regulation (see https://www.irs.gov/publications/p946/ch04.html ). If the practical economic life of an American building is 100 years as you suggest, why is the federal government cheating itself of tax revenue by offering 27-40-year depreciation schedules (actually the real length is typically lower because building owners do a “segregation study” and find the 5-year and 7-year items within the building; see http://www.costseg.com/cost-seg.html).
I was curious where my state stood on per pupil spending, found this:
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2015/cb15-98.html
Sounds like Boston is the highest in the nation, Michigan is in the $11,000 range. If you “get what you pay for”, your students must be twice as good as ours! 🙂
John: Massachusetts does perform well, but if you adjust for demographics, scarcely better than Texas (see http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/27/upshot/surprise-florida-and-texas-excel-in-math-and-reading-scores.html ). If you then adjust for dollars spent, Texas is probably the most effective state in the U.S. Based on the Times chart, looks as though California might be the worst, though perhaps it is New York (2X the spending of other states for slightly better performance; see http://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=SSF_2013_SSF008.US01&prodType=table ).
[Sidenote: Your home state of Michigan looks to be pretty close to as bad as California in the Times chart!]