Charter school to expand

PALMER — The principal of Academy Charter School said she is very excited about a recently passed Mat-Su Borough ordinance that clears away some obstacles standing in the way of the school’s expansion plans.

The measure, which passed the borough assembly Nov. 23, authorizes the borough manager — for now that would be acting borough manager Elizabeth Gray — to seek appraisals and negotiate the possible sale of land directly adjacent to the school’s current site on the Old Glenn Highway in Palmer.

The ordinance doesn’t authorize Gray to purchase the property, just to report back on what she finds. Still, that doesn’t dim the enthusiasm of the head of the school.

“It’s huge,” principal Barbara Gerard said.

Gerard said her understanding is that the assembly has set a limit of around $1.2 million to buy the 20-acre site. Gray will come back with a report for the assembly on Feb. 15.

“We’re hopeful that the owner of that property will have come to some agreement and a fair price will be negotiated,” she said.

It’s a big step forward in what has been a long process, made even longer by the fact that Academy, the school board and borough assembly had been kind of making it up as they went along.

“Everybody’s been so supportive and helpful, but there just wasn’t a process,” Gerard said of the expansion effort.

Academy is the first of the borough’s growing roster of charter schools to occupy its own facility rather than lease one. The school has had its own building for nine years. More recently, the state came through with $2.5 million, which built the gymnasium building it now also occupies. But the main school is an old maintenance building. The school also has a couple of portable classrooms, and none of those older buildings are in tip-top shape.

“One of the doors literally blew off (last week),” Gerard said of the old maintenance building. “Myself and two of the teachers grabbed it and held it into position while some big, long screws were put in just to hold it through the day.”

So the idea is to build onto the gymnasium building. But there is one really major complicating factor — the city of Palmer’s parking regulations.

Gerard said Academy Charter has a stage and an auditorium all ready to go to host performances. But the school can’t do that yet because there isn’t enough parking to hold those kinds of events. She said there is just enough parking space — right down to the foot — to run school operations.

When the Old Glenn Highway was expanded, “the bike path had to be put on the other side of the road because we couldn’t lose the space,” she said.

Aside from not being able to use its auditorium, when and if the expansion begins the school will have to move its portable classrooms to make room. There’s no place to put those portables now without sacrificing parking and running afoul of city regulations.

Though the expansion will mostly go on the school’s current acreage, that extra parking will be a godsend, Gerard said. The land is also valuable to the borough, since a road built there could allow access from the Old Glenn to nearby soccer fields and to the school district’s administration building.

She said the expansion is a ways off. For funding, the school is eying a federal grant program that goes to help build charter school facilities. Those grants go on three-year cycles. It’s an off –year now.

But, she said, while they’re competitive, having a building in place and having room to build the new addition will look very good in the grant application.

“A beautiful $2.5-million building — that’s already showed investment by the state and the borough,” she said.

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