School Math

According to the figures recently bandied about in the press, it may take another $12 billion to undertake school construction in the Abbott districts alone. This on top of the $6 billion already spent.

Let’s put that into real terms that people can understand.

According to state figures, there are a total of 429 school buildings in the Abbott districts. A little bit of quick math – $18 billion divided by 429 – works out to $42 million per building.

Or, given the 335,000 kids in those schools, $54,000 for every blessed one of them.

And if we figure on an interest rate of about 5%, that’s $900,000,000 per year in interest, or $2700 per kid. Each and every year. Before buying a book, hiring a teacher, turning on the lights, heating a classroom.

Perhaps the time has come to consider vouchers. I absolutely guarantee that a voucher of $2,700 for elementary school kids would enable tens of thousands of youngsters to attend private schools. If a few thousand dollar scholarship would actually reduce the number of kids in the Abbott districts, we could save not only tens of thousands of dollars per year that presently goes toward education in governmentally owned and operated facilities, but the billions it will take to bring those facilities up to the solid gold standards upon which our black robed masters appear to insist.

If the program were hugely successful and enabled us to forego spending on just 10% of the facilities, that’s an instant savings of $1.8 billion. That would fund one heck of a lot of scholarships.

Is it not time to ask ourselves whether our ideological devotion to hugely expensive, governmentally run facilities is worth the mammoth expenditures?