Charter school contract to be rebid

PALMER -- It's not the answer they wanted, but Midnight Sun Family Learning Center staff agreed Tuesday they'd prefer to lose a little time by rebidding a contract to build a new school, than be caught up in what had the potential to become a drawn-out court battle.

The MSFLC parents and staff have been working for about a year to find new digs for their school. Currently, the school is a tenant in the B&J Rainbow Center, near Pittman Road off the Parks Highway. They share space at the shopping center with a liquor store, meat-packing facility and other stores, and have said the size of their existing space limits their growth. According to teacher Jeanne Troshynsky and parents who testified at the Tuesday assembly meeting, the school needs to be able to increase its enrollment to become solvent -- bringing in enough money from per-student funding to cover the operating and related costs to operate the school. With 106 students currently, the school parents and staff hope to increase enrollment to 166, and have said nearly 100 students are now on an enrollment waiting list.

But those students may have to wait a little longer for a new school. Mat-Su Borough staff recently agreed to cancel a bid solicitation for the school construction and re-bid the construction project.

This isn't the first hiccup school staff and parents have rode out in trying to get a new facility. A bond package that included funds to build a new charter school failed on the November election ballot, and shortly afterward school officials brought forward an idea to use a design/build mechanism that would allow them to lease a new facility, using funds now allocated to lease space at the Pittman Road shopping mall, to lease a site built with the school in mind.

With a few fits and starts, a bid request was issued, detailing what the school staff would need in the new building. The bids were opened and evaluated, and an apparent successful bidder was selected. Shortly after the bids were opened, the school's site selection committee met and ranked the two top proposals, submitted by Criterion General Inc. and Loon Lake LLC. On April 13, representatives from Bolshio Misha Inc., the company that owns B&J Rainbow Center, submitted a bid protest calling into question several perceived discrepancies in the bid documents. Russ Krafft, a purchasing officer with the Mat-Su Borough, said he reviewed the protest and found some of the items of protest to be valid. A primary flaw with the bid, he said, was that it should have been issued under the Title 19 bid criteria -- which pertains to charter schools -- instead of the Title 3, revenue and finance bid criteria. Title 3, Krafft said, pertains to purchasing borough property -- and the property the charter school would be built on would not nec0essarily belong to the borough. Title 19, Krafft said, was the proper format for bids relating to charter schools.

Because the bid was processed under Title 3, a protest procedure was made available that will not be available under Title 19. Title 3 stipulates that a bidder can protest a bid decision, and the purchasing officer can respond to their protest. If the bidder still disagrees, the matter goes to a hearing officer and, if the hearing officer's decision is protested, it could proceed to Alaska Superior Court and, eventually, to the state supreme court.

"It can take a year or more," Mat-Su Borough Attorney Theresa Williams told the assembly. "It could have extended the process out years, if you will and … in looking at this long, protracted procedure, that's why we recommended to reject all bids and start anew."

Before Williams explained the process -- and the potential for a lengthy court battle -- MSFLC parents pleaded with the assembly to rethink their decision, to issue the bid anyway and let construction begin. When they found out construction couldn't begin until the bid process had been exhausted, they reluctantly agreed that the process should begin again. Krafft said their decision may have saved valuable construction time -- if the protesting party were to have pled their case before a hearing officer, the timeline the process brings into play would have not allowed ground to be broken until the end of July.

"Under the new solicitation, they're looking at having it, in all likelihood, before the assembly on June 15," Krafft said.

That could mean the facility is not ready by the start of school in September. Troshynsky said they're hoping to have all 166 students enrolled at the beginning of the school year and, if the new facility is not available, it could mean a little squeezing.

"We're going to have to figure out what to do with all those kids," Troshynsky said.

Contact Rindi White at rindi.white@frontiersman.com.