Changes ahead for Academy Charter School

PALMER — With $1.5 million in state money in hand, the Mat-Su Borough Assembly wants to take Academy Charter School’s expansion a step further.

At Tuesday’s assembly meeting, members were told that the $1.36 million contract they were about to award to Dowland Construction, which came out of a $1.5 million appropriation from the state Legislature, could add four classrooms to Academy Charter. But for just a little bit more money, the school could get 10 classrooms.

“If you will cut me a check for $342,840, I will build Academy Charter school with (the extra rooms),” borough Public Works director Shaune O’Neill said.

The plan at the start of the meeting was to do that with a loan.

“We have discussed about using some borough funds to advance a good portion of that money, and then have that paid back through the operations over, I believe, the next six years,” borough manager John Moosey said.

Payments would be $50,000 per year, he said. Academy had some money on its books it might be able to chip in to drop that $340,000 down a bit.

But borough attorney Nick Spiropoulos knocked that down.

“I’m not sure if that’s legal, quite frankly,” Spiropoulos said, explaining that courts consider charter schools to be a part of the school district, and thus a part of the borough. “It would be like saying you’re going to loan money to a library. … Are there going to be remedies for non-payments? Are we going to go repossess the school if they don’t make payments?”

The discussion then seemed to shift to a question of whether to give the money to Academy outright.

“We did the same thing for the Sutton Community Center,” said assemblyman Vern Halter. “We got the job done.”

Assemblyman Warren Keogh said he supports Academy and appreciates the work the school does, but he also urged caution.

“This would be a precedent-setting way of doing business between the assembly and the school district,” Keogh said. “Who’s next in line? Will there be other schools that approach us?”

Assemblyman Jim Colver seemed to say that the loan was probably a bad idea in light of Spiropoulos’ opinion.

“We’re charting new territory. I don’t know of any other district that has publicly owned charter facilities on public land,” Colver said. “We’ve got to involve our attorney more early in these meetings. … I feel like I got egg all over my face on that one.”

Colver noted that Academy gets probably $500,000 fewer dollars per year than other schools do since the borough doesn’t fund charter schools. Assemblyman Ron Arvin also spoke to that disparity.

“I just want to remind everyone at the table and the public that the borough provides no per-pupil allocation to charter schools. The only money that they get is from the state,” Arvin said. “This is not a situation where a charter school is getting preferential treatment.”

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.