Robbinsdale eyes stimulus money for new school

Robbinsdale schools superintendent Stan Mack is hoping to rub the magic stimulus funding lamp and get ... a new school.

With less than two months remaining as superintendent before he retires, Mack is hoping the district can plug into school construction and renovation aid funds that are part of President Obama's huge stimulus plan, designed to help rev up the recession-mired national economy. Mack said he and the school board are shooting for $20 million to $24 million, enough to build a new 1,000-student elementary school near the border of Robbinsdale and Brooklyn Center, in the northeastern part of the district.

The idea would be to have a new school replace Northport Elementary in Brooklyn Center and Lakeview Elementary in Robbinsdale. Both schools are so sorely in need of repairs that it would cost an estimated $15 million to renovate Lakeview and $22 million to renovate Northport.

In fact, Mack said, the state Department of Education figured the costs of renovating the schools to be so high that they would not let the district issue the bonds needed to do the work. So, the search for new school possibilities began. Trying to raise the money from taxpayers to build one seemed a non-starter. The district is shutting down two elementary schools and one middle school at the end of this school year, saving $2 million a year in the process.

"In this economy, it doesn't seem prudent at all to try to build replacement schools," Mack said. Besides, the district has gone to the voters twice in the last two years for more tax revenues, getting nothing in 2007, but approval last year for a tax levy that brings in $9.4 million a year over seven years.

The federal stimulus package will feed hundreds of millions of dollars to Minnesota school districts over the next couple of years. But it's a Byzantine system of different pots of money and conditions for their use that still has many superintendents and school boards scratching their heads.

Tens of millions are dollars are available for school construction and renovation, according to the Minnesota Department of Education, but that's mostly in the form of tax credits that would lower the interest rates on bonds issued by districts. In contrast, the Robbinsdale district wants the entire construction cost paid for, no strings attached.

Robbinsdale is one of the few north metro school districts angling for stimulus construction funds. Brooklyn Center would like to get about $200,000 to help it build a medical clinic in the high school, and replace the floor and refurbish the locker rooms in the junior high school gym, said superintendent Keith Lester. Most other neighboring districts say they simply don't need construction funds right now, though they will eagerly use other, nonconstruction stimulus funds in the months to come.

Mack puts the use of federal funds to build a school in the context of the last major financial crisis -- the Great Depression of the 1930s -- and the Roosevelt administration's efforts to stem the horrific loss of jobs and capital with massive public works programs.

"I kind of relate it to a 21st-century WPA [Works Progress Administration]," said Mack, referring to one such public works effort in the 1930s. "We're dealing with a similar situation. The federal response at that time was to put money into projects we have benefitted from in the long term ... If that's the direction we want to go in, children should be a central part of that. ... We would produce a good school for the future for the northeastern part of the district, and also produce a number of new construction jobs."

Both Mack and Dehler concede that the stimulus windfall they are seeking is a long shot.

"If it works out, great," Dehler said. "But it really seems it would be like lightning striking in the same place twice. We'd be pretty lucky."

"The dreaming is a lot of fun," Mack said. "But reality would be a lot more fun if we got to that place."