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Numbers don’t add up on Altoona project

The Altoona Area School Board seems intent on spending millions of dollars on a new building, about $88 million.

What really are the taxpayers going to receive for that hefty investment? Another new building in the most traffic congested area of town.

The building will not make better, more educated students. It takes dedicated teachers who love to teach and dedicated moms and dads who take enough interest in their kids to make sure they go to school and study hard what they are being taught.

A new building will not make that happen.

Also two items that I feel the school board should consider before going ahead with this project:

One, how many homes are in the Altoona-Logan Township area which will be expected to pay for this building? Be honest and tell the citizens just exactly how much of that

$88 million each and every homeowner in the district is expected to pay through real estate taxes for this project.

Just because the county reassessed property is not a reason to go ahead and do expensive projects like this.

The poor property owners are already paying too much for government in this area and the school district is just another government agency.

Second, they should consider how much this is costing per student. Even if AAHS graduates a 1,000 students per year (a high number) each year for the next 30 years (estimated life of the bond issue) that would be only 30,000 graduates.

Divide 30,000 into $88 million and see what that cost would be for each student, and that is just for the building construction. Even if it would last 60 years before needing replaced it would still be an extremely high number for each student.

Maybe it is time for the school board to do some simple math and realize this project is just too costly.

At the very least, they should produce these numbers for the citizens and then let the taxpayers decide if this project is worth the cost.

Leonard E. Alwine

Altoona

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