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Costly schooling

WE BELIEVE education is priceless, but we also believe it should fall in the parameters of fiscal responsibility.

Such is not the case with the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools. The Los Angeles-based learning center is an educational template for spending irresponsibility.

The school, ticketed to open next month, carries with it a staggering $578 million price tag. Thus, it is the costliest public school ever.

We find such spending tactics as academic overkill. Moreover, it is a bitter pill to swallow in Eastern Ohio, where school funding is at crisis levels.

We don’t believe in shortchanging any student. Quality education is the foundation for a productive future.

But it is hard to fathom why any school should cost $578 million.

The new K-12 facility features remnants of the Ambassador Hotel, where RFK was assassinated during his 1968 presidential campaign.

We are all for preserving history, but not if it yields such financial lunacy.

The Los Angeles school also has a public park, state-of-the-art swimming pool, a dance studio with cushioned marble floors and talking benches.

Such amenities are extravagance gone awry. Such unneeded educational luxuries are mind-boggling to our mode of thinking in the Ohio Valley.

The cost of the RFK palace strikes a sensitive nerve when you factor in that school district has laid off some 3,000 teachers over the past two years and faces a $640 million shortfall.

Moreover, academically the school district ranks with the nation’s lowest performing.

Spending so frivolously is a black eye to the California education system, as such multi-million dollar waste makes no sense.

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