Budget Cuts Leave Brand New School Empty

Hillcrest High School in Riverside, California, was scheduled to be completed and ready for use in the 2011-12 school year. But due to massive budget cuts across the state, education officials say they don't have enough money to run the school.

Back in 2007, voters approved bonds to finance the building of the high school, which would have helped alleviate some of the over-crowding issues in other schools within the district. But over the last 3 years, the state of California has had to cut nearly a third of K-12 funding - $18 billion overall - in order to combat a severe shortfall in the budget.

As a result, the school district's $130 million operating budget has been cut by $25 million, and that doesn't leave enough money for the district to hire administrators, teaches and other school staff. In addition, the district will still have to spend $1 million to maintain the building and run air conditioning and other systems to keep them from deteriorating until they can hopefully open the school in in 2012-13 school year.

This is a pretty sad indicator of how bad it is in California right now. I wonder if the officials just didn't anticipate the budget being cut so much, cause I can't think of any other reason to build a school that you can't run.