District charter schools pursue permanent homes

MAT-SU - Here's something you might not know about charter schools: all but one in the Mat-Su Borough are housed in rented facilities.

Borough Assemblyman Jim Colver said he'd like to see that change. Soon after he was elected he began the process of setting up a process to accomplish that.

"If the school has been in existence for five years and has a track record of success, then they can apply for a permanent facility," Colver said.

That five-year period is a way to make sure the borough doesn't wind up holding the bag if a charter school fails, Colver said.

The first school to start the ball rolling is Fronteras, which will mark five years this fall. Colver said when Fronteras came to the borough to start the process, he was all too familiar with the school's motivation.

"I'm sure familiar with your lease. I voted against it. It was the worst lease I've ever seen," Colver said.

But while the previous guidelines set up the framework for a way to get charter schools into permanent facilities, he said there are a lot of details to be worked out, most notably, financing.

Charter schools operate on what's usually referred to as their per-pupil allowance. The state gives all school districts in Alaska a set amount based on how many students they have. With regular public schools, the Mat-Su Borough School District puts that money in a pot and doles it out to various schools. Charter schools hang on to most of their per-pupil dollars, and they draw from those funds to pay rent.

Colver said the cleanest way he can think of to fund a new building would be for the borough to finance it and to use money the schools pay in rent to pay back the loan.

This is where he's been getting some friction. School board member Ole Larson said he worries the public will frown on the borough borrowing money for schools after the district promised the massive package of bonds passed last year would be all the borrowing the district did for five years.

"About five or six years ago, Academy Charter had a bond to the public to bond to build a new building for a charter school. It failed 85 percent to 15," Larson said. "The public did not want to use public money to build a charter school."

But Colver disagrees. What the public doesn't want to see, he said, is taxes raised to pay for more borrowing after taxes were hiked for that five-year package.

The financing vehicle he has in mind would not raise taxes because it would be paid back through that per-pupil money.

"This is a revenue-neutral financing vehicle," Colver said. "It's kind of like a what you call in real estate a wrap around financing. We finance it and then we lease it right back out."

He likened it to the way the borough financed the Goose Creek Correctional Center. That project didn't raise taxes. The state is paying back those bonds.

Larson said he also worried that there wasn't enough debate on the issue, that it would make its way through subcommittees and be put up for a vote at the assembly table without the assembly having a chance to guide the process.

"We need to get a debate going one way or the other instead of having it slide through subcommittees," Larson said.

That issue of transparency was a big enough deal that Colver solicited an opinion from Borough Attorney Nick Spiropoulos, who said that the borough assembly doesn't have to offer guidance as the school site selection committee does its work if it doesn't want to.

"As with many of the administrative matters within the borough, the committee may proceed as it sees fit within the boundaries of the code. Questions of the best options, sources of funding, priorities, etc., are all within the realm of the committee to render advice," Spiropoulos wrote.

Colver noted that the process he sees is the site selection moving from the committee to the planning commission, making a stop at the school board for an opinion, and then arriving at the assembly.

"I think debate is healthy. Let's talk about the issues," he said.

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