LETTER: Stop enabling virtual school scam

"The Public is fleeced at both the state and local level"

Stop enabling virtual school scam

By Paul Hall
April 18, 2011

LETTER
Dear Bob:  "The state school superintendent (SPI) is asking for hundreds of millions of dollars for new construction in the Capital Budget. It may pass without much scrutiny because (as Larry Springer aptly states in his recent Kirkland Views video) the legislature has had only one topic on its mind, the Operating Budget. For the last several years, SPI has been using a major portion of its capital funds to enable what I call the "Virtual School" scam. It's been successfully plied for several years by affluent school districts to pilfer state matching money for otherwise ineligible new construction.

The scam is simple. A district starts a "modernization" project. It then requires the Architect to include the cost to provide temporary housing (a "Virtual School"), during the entire time of remodeling, as a part of the cost of modernization. This contrived major cost, when combined with major remodeling costs, runs the total estimated project cost above the state matching limit for a modernization project. SPI rejects the modernization project based on this bogus estimate, but approves a request for state matching funds for new construction in lieu of modernization. This costs the state (as well as the local school district) 50-60% more in construction costs than if the building were remodeled. A substantially sound public building with scores of remaining useful years becomes landfill. The district gets a new school and calls it "modernized". The state has 50-60% less money to spend on legitimately needed projects. The public is fleeced at both the state and local level. This practice is clearly neither fiscally responsible nor sustainable in any sense.

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Since the "Virtual School" is never built, the ruse is used over and over for other projects. Only SPI knows how many districts have taken advantage of this ploy for how many schools over how many years. We're talking hundreds of millions of dollars wasted in any case. Our local Lake Washington School District alone has used the scam for over 20 schools and still counting. Rose Hill JHS will be the next victim if state funding is approved. I'm not sure where the Capital Budget is at this point. In any event, I'd like to encourage all concerned local citizens to forward this message to their legislators and ask them to do what they can to ensure that no further capital funding for SPI will enable the continuation of this scam.
 
By Paul Hall
Kirkland, WA.
Internet Cartoon and Links added by Editor

COMMENT:
"Mr. Hall submitted this column to the Kirkland Views blog some time ago. We completely disagree with his analysis. There is a real cost to housing students and staff if a building is remodeled, not a “virtual” one."
 -- By Kathryn Reith, Communications Director, LW School District , 4/19

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