A $9 Million Theater in Lincoln Public Schools

Is a Dramatic - Even Tragicomic - Example

In the Upcoming $250 Bond Issue

 

            Lincoln Public Schools officials had to be wincing when a senior at Southwest High School said in a Lincoln Journal article the other day that her school's theater cost $9 million and she gets to "play" in it every day after school.

 

            That's a dramatic revelation. Is it tragedy? Is it comedy? Depends on your perspective.

 

            Since LPS has a $250 million bond issue on the ballot Tuesday, the timing of that little bombshell exploding onto taxpayers' already-frayed nerves has to be upsetting for them. The whole point of that quarter-of-a-billion dollar debt is supposedly to improve academics, especially for low-income and minority children in Lincoln. But you could buy 900,000 paperback books at $10 apiece and give each child in LPS 30 good books each for $9 million.

 

            Read the interview on: http://www.journalstar.com/articles/2006/02/06/homeroom/doc43e68fb89ef4a511478757.txt

 

           

 

            The person who answered the phone at Southwest said that the $9 million figure is the one she had always heard around school for the 600-seat theater, but suggested I check with the district. A call to Dennis Van Horn, LPS associate superintendent for business, revealed that the official district stance has never been to separate out the cost of individual sections of the high school, which was finished in 2002 at a cost of $45 million, including furnishings and equipment.

 

            When asked if he saw the article, Van Horn said he did, and that the $9 million figure seemed too high, but didn't take action to clarify it because he's got his hands full managing the $250 million bond issue proposal.

 

            Whatever. I just compare pictures of it to the theaters I've attended in Omaha. The only one that seems fancier is the new Holland Center. And that's for Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman, not high-school kids.

 

            For a grand finale to this story, visit http://teachers.lps.org/bhenrich/stories/storyReader$25 and see if somebody ought to be doing a little rescripting for the Southwest drama teacher. Look at the misspelled words, grammar errors and inappropriate language on this page. I'm sure he's a ton of fun and it looks as though he works hard to relate to the kids on their level. But it's a bit disconcerting to remember that he's in charge of this lavish, state-of-the-art, taxpayer-funded theater:

 

            "knarley" for "gnarly"

            "excercises" for "exercises"

            "gawd" for "God"

           

            ; instead of :

            missing the word "have" in "If you questions"

            inappropriate expression: "shot in the buttocks"

            missing apostrophe in "someone elses"

 

            Yes, the Bard said, "All the world's a stage" . . . but honest to goodness, how are taxpayers supposed to keep paying for it?

 

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2/9/06 • www.GoBigEd.com