The Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly is set to vote this week on an ordinance that would enable administration to lease the vacant Pearl Creek Elementary building to a charter school committee.
The nearly 63,000 square-foot former elementary school closed last summer after the local school board looked for ways to cut costs amid a projected budget shortfall, and control of the building shifted from the school district to the borough in December.
Under the proposed lease terms, the borough would enter into a five-year agreement with Pearl Creek STEAM Charter School. Rent would be $0, but the charter school would reimburse annual maintenance costs, estimated at $400,000, according to borough administration.
Assemblymember David Guttenberg is one of three sponsors of the ordinance, which isn’t the lease itself. But he said the deal offers a viable way to get people into the former elementary school and that the borough is responsible for upkeep on too many unused facilities, like the former Joy Elementary School building.
“To heat them with nobody in them just to mothball them as they degrade just costs the taxpayers money,” he said. “It’s just not a good function for a building.”
The ordinance would appropriate about $270,000 in borough funds for maintenance at the school, on top of operational costs already budgeted for this fiscal year. The lessee would also reimburse that $270,000, according to a presentation from the borough's Division of Natural Resources Development.
A clause in the ordinance makes the whole thing contingent on the school’s committee signing a final contract with the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District. The charter school is currently mired in civil proceedings in state court amid a long-running dispute between local education officials, who voted down the charter application last year, and state education officials, who later approved it. That led the district to appeal to Alaska Superior Court in May.
The Alaska Supreme Court denied an emergency petition on the matter last week after the lower court ruled against Pearl Creek on a motion for preliminary injunction. The petition, like that motion, had sought to force school district officials to take steps to open the school in August, as the charter committee had planned.
The school district’s appeal of the state board of education’s final approval, as well as related lawsuits, remain in superior court.
Borough Deputy Chief of Staff Amy Gallaway said the borough isn’t a part of the legal proceedings, and that the lease won’t move forward if the school doesn’t.
“We recognize that this is a very complicated court situation right now, and the administration here – we are not interested in wading into that nor are we interested in being an obstacle,” she said.
The facility has been a prominent subtopic within the larger dispute over Pearl Creek STEAM Charter School. Uncertainty around the lease was one of 11 reasons the local school board cited in its written denial of the charter application last year.
The Assembly took no votes at its finance committee meeting last week, and the conversation was mostly limited to discussion and questions rather than debate. A public hearing and final vote on the ordinance is scheduled for a special Assembly meeting on Thursday.