Ordinary Services @ Extraordinary Costs
For many years, we’ve said that services provided by Arlington County and the Arlington Public Schools comes at too steep a price. An analysis of the facility costs of five Virginia high schools put under contract during school year 2005-2006 provides the latest proof.
Arlington’s Washington-Lee High School was one of the five high schools put under contract during school year 2005-2006. Maximum occupancy for the five ranged from 1,310 students at Warhill to 1,644 at Culpeper; W-L's is listed as 1,600. Here are the pertinent, comparable numbers for the five schools:
| High School
| School Division
| Square Feet per Student
| Building Cost per Square Foot
| Total Cost per Student
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Warhill
| WJCC
| 184
| $183.47
| $38,875
|
| Culpepper
| Culpeper
| 158
| $159.71
| $28,673
|
| Dinwiddie
| Dinwiddie
| 141
| $164.24
| $25,340
|
| King George
| King George
| 145
| $145.07
| $23,462
|
| W-L
| Arlington
| 227
| $213.86
| $53,025
|
The above data comes from the facilities cost data for 2005-2006 from the Virginia Department of Education. Interestingly, the data for Washington-Lee was not available until about two weeks ago when we started asking why it was missing from the report even though school year 2006-2007 data had been posted. The data for W-L is there now, however.