Lehighton Area School District will borrow up to $35 million in a non-bank qualified bond to pay for a new elementary center and part of renovations to its middle and high schools.

The final piece of a funding puzzle for the projects was passed by a 5-4 school board vote Monday night.According to Zach Williard, of Public Financial Management, the district may not have to borrow $35 million to receive $35 million."Investors are going to ask for a premium interest rate, and in exchange for that, they're going to pay more than 100 cents on the dollar for those bonds. Given that, we're projecting that the district will probably only have to borrow around $32 million to get $35 million in cash."Williard said Monday's motion allows PFM to lock in the best interest rate over the next few weeks for the district. When it does, Lehighton will learn how long it will pay back the bonds."We can go up to 28 years with this motion, but our end goal is to keep the district's debt service the same," Williard said. "That means they would not have a millage increase based on the debt service."The bond would have a 10-year call, meaning the district could refinance at that point.In August, the district unveiled a design for the 146,000-square-foot elementary center, which would house all K-5 students. East Penn, Mahoning, Franklin and Shull-David elementary schools would close.Last year, the district authorized borrowing $23.5 million to pay for the middle and high school renovations."Of this money, $32.5 million would pay for the elementary center and $2.5 million would pay for the alternates of the middle and high school work."The district on Monday approved several alternates to the renovations including improvements to the administration and guidance areas at the high school, a new fitness and wrestling room at the high school, science casework replacement at the middle school, new middle school auditorium seats, a new middle school auditorium lighting, and sound system and a new paging, phone and clock system in both buildings.Not everyone was on board with the borrowing.Board members Rocky Ahner, William Hill, Hal Resh and Lori Nothstein voted against it, while Gloria Bowman, Wayne Wentz, Larry Stern, Stephen Holland and Andrew Yenser supported the motion."I hate to tell you, but this elementary center project is going to cost every bit of $40 million," Hill said. "This can spiral out of control. The elementary center design is conceptual at this point. Nobody can sit here and tell me we won't raise taxes in 30 years."Lehighton's business manager, Brian Feick, said the district has been paying soft costs for the elementary center out of its general fund balance.Part of the $32.5 million would go toward paying that money back.Cleaver said the district would save over $1 million from consolidating four elementary schools into one center including $650,000 just from reorganizing administrative staff."I would like to see how we're going to save $1.2 million," Ahner said. "I don't think it's set in stone that we won't raise taxes. I'd like to see this motion moved to the next meeting, when we'll have a better idea of how many years we would be paying on it. We're putting future boards and taxpayers in jeopardy."To help get to the $1.2 million figure, the district took a look at its expenses at the four elementary schools and compared it to what it spends at the high school."There are things we pay for per building, like utilities, that would go away if we move to one building," Cleaver said. "Our fiber Internet lines are run from the main campus where the administration building and high school are to each of the four elementary schools. Now, we would run one line about 300 yards. Those are the kind of savings we looked at."On top of operational savings, Cleaver said the new center would have educational benefits."It would allow us to average around 18-20 students in our kindergarten classes," he said."Right now, our numbers are all over the place in our four schools. I think that is in the best educational interest of our students."Monday's motion allows PFM to lock in an interest rate at any time, when they feel the district will get the best deal."Interest rates are still low," Williard said. "They aren't record lows like they were, but they're still low."