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Comment by jp_rider | Hacker News Reader

Since Baltimore City is getting more money per student, why aren't they able to properly maintain their buildings [1]? Poor management? Corruption? Lack of heating and working bathrooms is inexcusable.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/04/us/baltimore-schools-wint...

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Older infrastructure requiring more maintenance, plus higher expenses/labor costs of city vs suburbs.

That might be true generally (and cities like New York and DC have really high per capita spending for that reason), but Baltimore is quite a bit less expensive than the surrounding suburbs. You can buy a gorgeously renovated townhouse in a nice neighborhood for $400-500k, a fraction of what it would cost in Montgomery County.

That has little to do with how expensive it is to maintain a building, especially a government building.

How expensive would it be to put space heaters in every classroom? Even window heaters are only $500. Surely a school district that spends $17m a year on maintenance can come up with that. My guess is bureaucracy/mismanagement is the real problem. The larger a school district is, the more bureaucracy.

Ok--http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/education/bs-md-ci... The money is there apparently.

Ever plug in 20 space heaters at once in a building whose electrical systems are over 50 years old?

They certainly have a problem with mismanagement, but having to use space heaters to warm a classroom means things are going seriously wrong.

Remember Freddie Gray? It’s the same municipal government in charge of education too.

Suburban areas in the US aren't old enough to get hit with infrastructure maintenance costs like the urban areas are. This is a really interesting article about the profitability and maintainability of growth: https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/

Baltimore has much older infrastructure and buildings than any of its suburbs. That would lead to higher costs not to mention higher costs for being an urban metro to begin with.

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