Chamblee High to Receive Money
Saturday, November 20th, 2010Chamblee Charter High School now has the funds to rebuild its aging facility, after the DeKalb County Board of Education agreed to use federal funding to replace it, rather than renovate it.
The board unanimously voted to accept $58 million in federal bonds to be sold and then added to the $11 million-plus, Chamblee High has already banked from an ongoing Special Local Option Sales Tax. The facility’s problems led the school to bank more than an $11-million chunk of an ongoing local option sales tax instead of spending the money on repairs. The rationale was that the sales tax revenue would not provide enough to renovate a facility that needed to be replaced.
The aging, high-performing school was established in 1917 and has been rebuilt before. Chamblee Charter High School serves a mix of resident students from the Brookhaven and Chamblee areas, as well as transfer students and high-performing students from across the district who attend the school’s high-achiever magnet program.
The financing will come from a federal bond program designed to make capital improvements at schools. The financing can be either no-interest or low-interest. An interest rate is established based on the rate the bonds are sold. Once the school district sells the bonds, the district will be reimbursed by the federal government for the interest owed on the bonds – up to a certain point – or a tax credit could be issued to investors.
