Patrick Gibbons of the Nevada Policy Research Institute has an excellent education blog post up. It addresses the disproportionately high cost of new school construction in Nevada compared to other states. Re-stated: we are great at being inefficient.
Apparently, Nevada ranks third in the nation in construction costs per student. Gibbons reminds us of the billions voters recently approved for new Clark County schools and then does the math. It comes out to roughly $130M per school (though, to be fair, Gibbons says the school district will use some portion of the funds to refurbish old buildings).
There are quite a few things Nevada could do to shore up efficiency and reduce spending. Including making it easier to form charter schools and create and use school vouchers, so financing for at least some new school construction can move to the private sector.
Pushing the risk of building the schools onto the private sector naturally creates incentives to keep construction costs low – because their costs have to be recouped by attracting students – but even if they should spend an excess, it wouldn’t be the taxpayers’ problem.
