BRISTOL, Va. — The city and its school division hope to receive up to $7.4 million from the state to help offset construction costs of its new $25 million elementary school.
The state Department of Education recently began accepting applications for funds available through its School Construction Assistance Program. Created by the General Assembly in 2022, it includes $400 million from the general fund and $50 million from the Literary Fund.
Superintendent Keith Perrigan told the City Council Tuesday he wanted to offer them some hope amid a bleak budget season as they face a $30 million funding gap due to costs of projects at the landfill.
“When this is all said and done, I do anticipate between $3 million and $4 million being available to the city to help pay principal payments for the new school over the next few years,” Perrigan said. “We’re very excited for the Board of Application to see that application and hopeful get that approval very soon.”
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The state board is to award grants on a “competitive basis to local school boards that demonstrate poor building conditions, commitment, and need in order for such local school boards to be able to fund the construction, expansion, or modernization of public school buildings,” according to the state website.
Groundbreaking for the $25 million school building currently being built adjacent to Van Pelt Elementary was last June, a short time before the state initiated the program to assist schools with building construction and rehabilitation. It appears the city project will qualify for those funds, according to Perrigan.
“The application deadline is March 31. Once that occurs the [state] Department of Education staff will start to review the applications,” Perrigan said. “After that they will make a recommendation to the [state] Board of Education for approval, which is when the money would be released.
“Since it may be mid-June before they can get that recommendation to the Board of Ed, I’m going to ask the Department of Education to release the recommendation, even though the recommendation wouldn’t be approved. If the recommendation is for us to receive the grant, I would ask our School Board and City Council to start making those decisions on how to spend that money, when it’s ready to go in June,” Perrigan said.
The School Construction Assistance Program doesn’t allow using those funds to pay down debt, except principal payments. It can’t pay interest or fees, he said.
In assembling the deal to fund the school, the school system used about $2 million of its federal ESSER [Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief] funds. Under the terms of this program, those funds would have to come out and be used for some other type of capital project or to fund positions created in the wake of the pandemic.
“That would be about $2 million would come off of that $7.4 million then we look at things we would like to do at the new school — to make it more durable, last longer — I don’t know what that amount is but we’ve got a punch list with the design team,” Perrigan said.
“Whatever is left after that, we’ve got to figure out how the city uses that money to make principal payments on the new school. Interest is a big portion on the front end of the loan and there is a period of time where we can’t buy it down,” he said. “We’ll have to work with city staff, bond counsel and the Department of Education — all those folks will have to come to the table to decide. I think it will be a significant amount of money that the city can use to help offset the cost of this project.”
dmcgee@bristolnews.com — Twitter: @DMcGeeBHC
