I’m So Poor I Can Barely Fire My Raku Pottery!

With L.A. school officials constantly complaining about funding shortfalls, the State of California seemingly in perpetual financial crisis, and federal lawmakers assuming that school districts have poor facilities due to lack of funds, this little number really makes you think: Does any district really need a $232 million art-school building equipped with, among other things, "floor-to-ceiling windows with motorized blackout shades....an outdoor atrium for firing Japanese raku pottery" and "a conical library whose dazzling interior swirls upward to an off-center skylight"? Probably not, and it really makes it hard to keep tolerating the incessant public-schooling complaints about woeful underfunding. Neither the broad data (see Indicator B1), nor such anecdotal evidence as the far-too-mundanely named Central High School No. 9, support the claim.