Nineteen million dollars for a new school- it kind of takes your breath away, doesn't it?

We get that the days of neighbours banding together to build their children a oneroom school for a few hundred dollars, with mostly donated materials and on a borrowed corner of a local farmer's field, are long gone.

Even barn-raisings are pretty much a thing of the past, and schools require far more engineering, technological, material, social, and educational understanding to ensure a comfortable and safe learning environment for our children (as opposed to housing a few cows and chickens and a pig or two).

But $19 million for an elementary school in Willoughby [New school taking 'LEED' role, May 15, Langley Advance] seems a pricey proposition in a time when governments at all levels profess a need to pinch pennies to offer whatever relief possible to a recessionburdened public.

To think that the South East Yorkson property on which the newly announced school will sit will eat up nearly $7 million of that price tag leaves us wondering at what happened to those Good Samaritans of the "old days" who used to consider it a privilege to allow the community to use of a portion of their land to accommodate the children - to accommodate the future.

It also leaves us wondering about some of the schools in other parts of Langley that are sitting empty or nearly empty because the very concept of using buses to transport children is repugnant to today's parents, at least those living in the pampered neighbourhoods of the Lower Mainland.

Our kids deserve the best education possible. They deserve effective accommodations and excellent teachers.

But we're not sure that every kid in every neighbourhood needs his or her own $19-million school.