32 Sticks of Butter
E. Boyer
Havens is nearly finished. It looks like it’ll be ready for all the little tykes by the start of school in late August. I think we can thank the 2006 Measure E and it’s $56 million for this crowning jewel. Measure E, by the way, was the largest bond measure in Piedmont’s history. In 1991 or 92 a bond measure passed in the range of 25 million. It was considered outlandish at the time. The measure that passed in 2006 was more than twice that. Is it me or does that seem disproportionate to the size of our city and school district? 56 million dollars! Geez, guys…that’s a lot of money. Really. It’s a lot. My understanding is that about 22 million was used to build Havens. A guaranteed cost from the folks who built it. Well, I guess for $22 million you could pretty much guarantee to giterdone within the budget! That’s kinda like saying “I guarantee that if I put 32 sticks of butter in this cake it will taste rich and delicious.” Or, “If I poke you in the eye with this knitting needle it will hurt.” You can pretty much take that one to the bank. It’s comforting to have a guarantee. It takes the worry out of a situation. I don’t recall having many guarantees when my kids were at Havens and frankly, I felt triumphant when they arrived home at the end of the day without any broken bones or pending lawsuits. Good times. I read in the Post last week that the turf they’re using for the playfield at Havens is manufactured in Italy. Bravisimo! It would appear that they’ve spared no expense. But, I do believe that you get what you pay for and I’m sure that importing the turf from Italy was a reasonable decision. So, three cheers for the new Havens. It’s really very nice.
Naturally, all this big dollar talk about Havens got me to thinking about the entire district which has 2,542 students. Suppose there was a bond measure to increase the budget for the actual education? What if, for every single student in the district we hired a private tutor for an hour, 4 days per week. The going rate for a tutor is about $75 per hour. So, that’s 2542 students x 4 days per week = 10,168 sessions per week x 75 per hour =$762,600 per week x 36 weeks in the school year = $27,453,600 for tutoring for every single student in the district, including kindergarten, for a year. Geez, guys. That’s a lot of education. But, what if we made it more realistic because kindergarteners and first graders probably don’t need tutoring. So, let’s subtract about 300 students for the K-1st in all three schools. That brings us to about 2,242 students. And, since a private tutor for each and every child would be decadent, let’s say we have one tutor for each group of 5 students. That’s about 448 groups or 448 tutors at $75 per hour. That’s $33,600 per hour x 4 days per week = $134,400 per week x 36 weeks per school year = $4,838,400. So, if we used the $56 million that we voted on in 2006, that would give us 11 years of tutoring for all of the students 2nd through 12th grades in the entire district, an hour a day, 4 days per week. Better check my math but, that’s a lot of tutoring. Don’t get me wrong. A new facility is nice but, wouldn’t an education be even better? I’d probably like a cake made with 32 sticks of butter but, I’m sure I could make better choices. I don’t know the rules about bond measures and all that stuff, but wouldn’t it be great if that big chunk of cash could go toward education? Can we do that? Otherwise, we’ll have to bake tons of brownies for the bake sale that will generate that kind of cash. But, we could probably charge more if we used lots of butter.
