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Charter schools in Nevada are seeking access to millions of dollars in loans currently available to support capital projects such as school building purchases and expansions.
The Nevada Facilities Fund is a $100 million revolving loan fund established by the State Infrastructure Bank to provide long-term, low-cost facilities financing to charter schools serving under-resourced communities. Although the fund officially launched in October, the fund’s many partners held an event this week to celebrate the fund, highlighting some of the charter schools that are expected to benefit from the fund.
Among them is Futuro Academy, a kindergarten through fifth-grade charter school in East Las Vegas, which plans to purchase space it currently leases. Ignacio Prado, executive director of Futuro, said that in the same way that it generally makes sense for individuals to buy a home rather than rent, owning a school also provides long-term financial security. He said that it would be possible.
The Nevada Facilities Fund (NVFF) includes $15 million in public funding approved by the State Infrastructure Bank in early 2022, $80 million from national donors through the Equitable Facilities Fund, and funding from local philanthropists. $5 million was seeded. The fund will also use her $12 million U.S. Department of Education grant awarded to Opportunity 180.
Opportunity 180 and the Equitable Facilities Fund will vet and help charter schools access NVFF. Leaders of these organizations say charter schools save an average of $150,000 a year.
Jana Wilcox-Lavin, CEO of Opportunity 180, said the savings will translate into more money spent in classrooms. Some charter schools spend up to a quarter of the base dollar per student they receive from the state on facilities.
Prado said Futuro’s savings could be used to strengthen special education services, support teachers and reduce class sizes.
Charter schools currently do not qualify for dedicated facilities funding, which is generated at the county level through property taxes and provided to traditional school districts. Nor can it use bonds to finance new buildings, as traditional school districts typically do.
By 2028, NVFF will fund 10 projects that will support 7,500 new charter school enrollments. The awarded funds are loans and must go back to NVFF to permanently support more projects.
Only schools serving historically underrepresented populations are eligible for funding. Wilcox-Lavin said this means funding will primarily go to charter schools already operating in Nevada, rather than charter schools looking to open.
Tambre Tondrik, executive director of Beacon Academy, said the Southern Nevada charter school, which enrolls credit-poor students who are at high risk of not graduating, will move to its existing Spring Valley campus, whose lease ends next summer. He said he is working to access NVFF to help with the purchase. New facility and relocation.
The second option is appealing. That’s because, like many charter schools, Beacon’s Spring Valley campus was renovated from an existing space that was not originally intended to be used as a school. (In their case, it was previously an office building.) The new space can give them a more traditional school “feel,” which is important to students and faculty.
Tondrik said lenders turned Beacon down when it was considering a site for the east campus. The reason for this is that the school appears to be significantly underperforming when compared to traditional school indicators such as graduation rates. In Nevada, Beacon has been approved and evaluated by the state public charter school authority under an alternative framework that recognizes that it serves a unique population.
“We have not been able to get the lenders to understand,” she added, but the NVFF “will make this very simple.”
Another school working with NVFF on the project is Mariposa Language and Learning Academy. The Reno charter school, whose enrollment is mostly minority students, plans to buy a new building that will allow him to expand from its current enrollment of 162 students to 300 students.
Celebrating public-private partnerships
Equitable Facilities Fund, a national partner of the Nevada Facilities Fund, has provided more than $1 billion in funding to charter schools across the country since 2018. In 2022, EFF launched the Texas Equitable Facility Fund, which is funded solely by philanthropic dollars.
That’s what makes the Nevada Fund unique, says Anand Kesavan, CEO of Equitable Facilities Fund.
Gov. Joe Lombardo, who briefly appeared at the NVFF event, spoke to the crowd of school leaders, elected officials and donors about the potential for public-private partnerships, suggesting further consideration is needed. He said it was “unfair” that it had taken this long to get to this point.
He added that proposals related to K-12 education and charter schools typically result in “battles” in Congress. Democrats argued that the state should focus on improving traditional public school districts and were reluctant to support rapid expansion of charter and private schools.
The Republican governor, who took office about a year after the state infrastructure bank proposed setting aside $15 million for “charter school funding needs,” is following Nevada State Treasurer Zach Conine’s (D) “This is a great move,” he said, praising the move to build the facility. Fund.
Conine acknowledged the reservations some Democrats have about charter schools, but said facility funding is not “a gamble” but simply “good business.”
“It may not be the most popular thing in some of the circles I work with, but it’s the right thing to do,” he added.
Futuro Academy’s Prado said the launch of NVFF could be a “watershed moment” where states recognize the benefits of supporting charter schools, especially those that wish to establish or expand in urban centers. It states that there is.
He added: “I think looking back, we can see that this was the trigger we needed.”
Nevada’s state infrastructure bank was created by Congress in 2017 but remained underfunded until 2021. That same year, lawmakers approved $75 million in general obligation bonds for the bank to be used for charter schools, affordable housing projects and other “social services” projects. Otherwise, we would not have been able to secure funding.
The state infrastructure bank, chaired by Conine, is scheduled to receive an update on the Nevada Facilities Fund at its next meeting scheduled for Tuesday.
Nevada Current is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by a coalition of grants and donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nevada Current maintains editorial independence. If you have any questions, please contact editor Hue Jackson at info@nevadacurrent.com. Follow Nevada Current on Facebook twitter.
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