How the rich cornered the market on great ideas to $ave our failing public schools

When we last checked in with our rich friends, they were flush with cash and aflurry with many excellent ideas for saving our failed and failing public schools.Now, with the stock market ascendant and corporate profits at an all time high, these generous benefactors are themselves rising to new heights of generosity and excellence.Today’s outstanding idea is brought to us (and to our failing schools) by the rich of New York City who have come up with an idea so bold, so transformative, so disruptive that we have no choice but to raise our glasses to them.

Reader: it is a great irony that even as the prospects of New York City’s schoolchildren plummet due to union stifling and excellence depletion, the value of the land on which their failed and failing schools sit continues to rise.If only there were a way to rectify this imbalance by demolishing the old school, erecting a luxury tower in its place, then allowing the school to move back into a designated space when construction is complete. A concept this bold and transformative can only be described one way: as a “win win.” Here’s Jamie Farr, the former executive director of the Education Construction Fund.

“This is a win-win-win for everyone involved…The students get a brand new school, the city doesn’t have to pay for it, and developers get to build much needed residential units.” 

As any hedge-fund-manager-turned-education-reformer worth his salt can attest, there is a dire shortage of luxury apartments in Manhattan these days, something that this bold plan to save our schools will happily correct. And don’t forget the big winners in this scheme: the real estate developers the students. Once construction is complete—an estimated two years from now, the students will have access to amenities that their peers in Chicago can only dream about, like air conditioning, libraries and a separate entrance to call their own. Best of all, these formerly stifled students will enjoy the inspiration to achieve that can only come of having very rich people living directly over head.

Of course there are a few haters skeptics, such as the parents of the children who attend the three  investment properties  schools and were somewhat stunned to learn via the newspaper that what they’d mistakenly believed to be public schools are actually“substantial sites within markets starved for luxury residential units.” And that their children will be relocated to yet-to-be-specified sites while a soon-to-be-selected developer builds “projects of significant height and tremendous views.”Have no fear, overly concerned reader. The city originally told developers that they could go ahead and start building the new luxury towers with virtually no public review. But then plans for Operation Rising Achievement were leaked to the press, leaving city officials with no choice but to pledge to involve parents throughout the project.

To fully capture the boldness, not to mention the transformationalness of this scheme, I’m left with no choice but to call upon one of New York City’s true edu-visionaries: Mr. Joel Klein. Now in the business of hawking edu-schlock, Mr. Klein is fond of remarking that the K-12 market is “ripe for disruption.” And that’s where the excellence enhancing aspect of the city’s redevelopment vision really shines. With the students at the three schools scheduled to be housed in temporary quarters for up to three years, I think it’s safe to say that their K-12 education will be disrupted. 

Thanks to wonderblogger Jonathan Pelto for bringing this story to my attention. Send tips, comments and investment opportunities to tips@edushyster.com.