Charter school seeks new frontier

PALMER — If all goes according to plan, Fronteras Spanish Immersion Charter School should have a new building in a couple of years.

The school is seeking to build a facility through a loan from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. At its meeting last week, the Mat-Su Borough Assembly gave the school the go-ahead to apply for the funds. Borough documents didn’t contain a figure for how much money the school would seek to borrow, but in August 2012 when the assembly considered selling bonds to pay for the school, the price tag was $15 million.

Assemblyman Jim Colver hailed the move to apply to the USDA Rural Communities program as long overdue.

“They’ve been stuck in that gravel pit off of Bogard (Road),” he said of Fronteras’ current location.

The ordinance approving the start of the loan application describes the facility as, “17,000 square feet in six buildings set 200 yards apart in a 12-acre active gravel pit without a gym or space large enough to legally assemble the

student families for plays, meetings or events.”

Fronteras principal Jennifer Schmidt described the facility’s shortcomings more simply.

“It’s too small for what we need,” she said.

The plan, she said, is to pay back the loan through the school’s annual budget. Charter school budgets in the borough come from the state. The state provides funding to school districts on a formula based on how many students the district educates. In the case of charters, that so-called “per pupil allowance” goes to the charters rather than to the district. Fronteras’ budget for the 2013-14 school year is $2.7 million. There were 251 students enrolled there at the start of the school year.

At last week’s meeting, the assembly seemed mostly concerned with the what-ifs. What happens if the school can’t pay back the loan?

Borough manager John Moosey said estimates show the school can easily afford the payments.

“This will be at or less than the rent they are paying now,” he said. But, if the unthinkable happens, the borough is not liable for the loan. “If they default, the building becomes ours. We probably don’t need the building, but it is a secure asset.”

Charter schools in the school district occupy a space apart from regular public schools. All, with the exception of Academy Charter, which has built a school building through state grants and borough funds, are housed in leased facilities.

In the case of Fronteras, the borough and the school are creating a process where by charter schools can construct permanent facilities. The borough is administering a $150,000 grant the school received from the state to work on the loan application and do design work for the school. The borough has also set aside 12 acres on Bogard Road on which to build the school.

Typically, when the Mat-Su Borough School District builds a school, it’s because it has found that either an old school needs replacing or the population of the borough has outgrown existing schools. And the borough would then sell bonds to fund the school’s construction.

It’s not usually the case that a principal is overseeing the construction or applying for a loan. That’s not the case with charters, Schmidt said.

“This is kind of what we signed up for,” she said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270

or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.