I told you so!

Sometimes, it's not great to be right after all.

The local adult education school (VHS) finally managed to move into its newly renovated premises - only 8 years after the initial idea and about 2.5 years after the planned opening. A sum of 10 million euros was spent on renovating the building and €4 million will have to be spent on the lease every year; and it's a 30-year lease. I know my maths isn't very good, but even I can calculate €120 million!! I was shocked by the figures here. How can this go well, I thought. They've spent too much. It's not like this is the only school that is having money thrown at it. Off the top of my head, I can think of three secondary schools that are being rebuilt or built new in this town. I did mention to the Head of English that I feared for the future of this particular school. And it seems I was right to be fearful.

With a four-million price tag for the building's lease every year, that means that the roughly 50,000 students a year contribute €80 each to cover that cost.

The reason for moving into the building in the first place was two-fold: firstly, they wanted to amalgamate three sites and bring them all together in one place; secondly, they wanted to attract younger students and the new location is next to a management school and a university of applied sciences.

Unfortunately, this town is now drowning in debt and late last week, all English teachers got an e-mail saying that, since the town has to make savings across the board [global, allgemein] the courses offered would be affected. There wasn't enough money to pay all the teachers.

In the English department, that means that courses in the categories of "English Extras, "General Business English", AND "Professional English" will ALL be cut. Completely. Some of the other, more general courses will disappear, too, or be shortened. And yet....at the same time... the powers that be [höhere Mächte] have increased the price they pay each teacher by one euro per 45-minute lesson. As the Americans say, "go figure" [Wahnsinn, oder? Stell dir vor].

I'm still trying to figure out how cutting business English and professional English is going to attract the younger students that the move to the new location was meant to attract.

And why pay more money per lesson when you are forced to cut the number of courses because you can't pay the teachers?

Mind-boggling. Irrsinnig!