Construction workers hurting from the roiled real estate market should head to Los Angeles, where the school district is feverishly adding square footage even as its enrollment declines. The Los Angeles Unified School District has lost 57,000 students over the past decade; fewer families are moving to the city and the Latino birth rate has fallen. But this enrollment decline began after local voters approved, ten years ago, a $20-billion capital improvement project to deal with classrooms that were, at the time, genuinely overcrowded. Now, however, the district estimates that in 2012 its schools will seat only 560,000 pupils in facilities that could handle 670,000. The extra room will allow many schools to remove portable classroom trailers and give teachers more office space, of course. But money doesn't grow on palm trees, and according to the Los Angeles Times, the district is still moving forward "with plans to build some schools in areas of dwindling population and others that are too large...." That doesn't sound smart or flexible in an era when big-city school districts, to retain students, need to be smart and flexible--and when it's still next to impossible for Los Angeles charter schools to gain access to decent facilities.
"L.A. Unified will have more seats, but fewer students to fill them," by Evelyn Larrubia, Los Angeles Times, June 23, 2008