Bringing money back into the school district was a main theme of Monday night’s meeting of the State College Area School Board.
Members of the board heard a presentation from State College Area School District Business Administrator Randy Brown and financial advisors David Eckhart and Thomas Beckett from NW Financial Group, LLC.
Eckhart and Beckett told the board they were hired to serve as advisors on the high school project, but also brought propositions on refinancing on current debts the district has in order to bring more money back into the district.
The district has a 2009 bond worth about $4 million and 2010 bond worth $5.4 million. The two advisors told the board that based on the strength of the market and available rates that now might be a good time to sell these bonds.
“This is somewhat like when people refinance a home mortgage,” Beckett explained to StateCollege.com. By selling their high interest bonds, they will be able to get new bonds at a lower interest rate – thereby bringing extra money into the district from the sale.
They projected that a sale of the 2009 bond could bring about $171,600 in savings into the district, and that a sale of the 2010 bond could bring about $212,600 – though Beckett stressed that these are only estimations, and subject to change depending on market rates.
The board also approved a series of routine documents to apply for reimbursement from the state for various projects undertaken over the last several years, including construction at the Ferguson Township and Mt. Nittany Elementary Schools.
SCASD Director of Physical Plant Ed Poprik says that these applications are part of a state process called PlanCon, which has typically yielded eight to ten percent of a project’s total cost reimbursed to the district.
Many of the PlanCon documents approved at Monday’s meeting were for projects that had been finished for years, which is because the PlanCon process was unavailable for several years due to issues with state funding. This lead to the “lots of backed up paperwork” that the district approved on Monday, Poprik says.
Poprik also briefed the board on plans for “phase two” of the Panorama building project. Construction is currently underway to accommodate functions that are housed in the College Heights building, which Poprik estimates will be finished by the beginning of 2015.
Phase two would include construction of additional spaces to meet “longstanding district needs,” including constructing office space for several district workers who do not have a permanent home and are “stuffed into various nooks and crannies.” These new spaces would also house an adult ESL program and spaces for large meetings that can’t be held elsewhere in the district.
Poprik says the “very preliminary” cost estimate comes in between $1.5 and two million. The board will approve these plans at a later meeting, with construction tentatively scheduled to begin in early 2015 and finish by September 2016.
The board also heard an update on the Delta middle level program and discussed an upcoming public forum on October 29 about the high school project, sinkhole repairs at Radio Park with help from the State College Borough, the possibility of creating a new board subcommittee on policy and a parent survey on several issues that board hopes to explore in the future.
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