Is this California or what?

I won't deny in Texas we can go overboard on high school football...but this modern day educational Taj Mahal was beyone anything in the Lone Star State.

Now like many things in the former Golden State, it's Iron Pyrite

California district can't afford to use new $105M school - USATODAY.com

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — In a sign of just how deep economic and budget problems have grown in the nation's largest state, a gleaming new high school built at a cost of $105 million will sit unused for at least a year because education officials say they don't have money to operate it.

By Robert Hanashiro, USA TODAY

Hillcrest High School in Riverside was planned to relieve crowding at a nearby school and was financed with bonds approved by voters in 2007. But Wendell Tucker, superintendent of the Alvord Unified School District, says big cuts in state funding, the main source of money for local schools, have left the inland Southern California district without the means to hire administrators, teachers and other staff needed to open the campus when the school year starts this fall...

...While the soon-to-be completed school will be empty, 3,400 students attend nearby La Sierra High School, built to house fewer than half that number. Classes in the main subjects are packed with 35 to 37 students each, Tucker says. Although the new school would ease crowding, he says, it would cost $3 million to open and operate it for the coming academic year.

Some teachers could be moved from the district's other high school, but opening a new school would require hiring additional teachers, administrators and support staff, as well as the costs of running the gym and other facilities, Tucker says...

...State Education Superintendent Tom Torlakson says he understands the district's decision, calling it "a shame" and evidence of "draconian" choices schools must make because of a state budget crisis that has forced the layoffs of 30,000 teachers and led to furlough days in many school systems...

...Tucker says that the decision to build the school was made in better economic times and that it would have been costly to back out of contracts and stop construction when the economy soured and the school district saw a $25 million reduction in its $130 million operating budget. He says that students and parents are disappointed but that most have been understanding...

...Tucker says the school district will spend $1million to maintain the new building, and run air conditioning and other systems to keep it from deteriorating. The library and ball fields, including an artificial turf football field, will be made available for community use.

There's no guarantee the school will open in fall 2012, either, Tucker says: "We'll look at it on a year-by-year basis."

"It's definitely a sign of the times," he says. "This is a real-life example of what the current budget situation has done to K-through-12 education."

I'm sorry but I don't see 130 million for a high school. That is absurd. Hopefully the school will open soon and actually educate as oppose to indoctrinate the kids there.