New lease nearly doubles space for charter school

Friday, Sept. 25, 2009

The lease addendum adds an additional 20,000 square feet to the school's 27,000-square-foot space, expanding the school's capacity to a maximum of 360 students, and nearly doubling its rent bill.

Along with a new gym and classrooms, the school hopes to add a large multipurpose room that could serve as an overflow for the cafeteria or eventually as a larger library for the school. An area in the facility that is currently set up as an indoor tennis court will provide most of the space for the expansion and is set to be available to the school next month.

The school's education director, Angela Funya, said that the additional space is also needed "in order to fully build out the middle school."

The school currently has 254 students and plans to expand by 40 students next school year to add an eighth-grade class. This is the first year the school has had seventh-grade classes.

The school has agreed to pay an additional $112,500 in rent for the space through June 2010 and $210,000 each year after for the extra space. The fee would be in addition to the school's existing $230,000 yearly lease, bringing the rent bill to $440,000 each year.

And the school is also responsible for paying its own outdoor lighting, grass, cutting, security and snow removal, for which it has currently budgeted $40,000 each year.

The lease also contains a provision in which the school pays two-thirds of the property taxes owed by its landlord, Big Blue Investments. The school has budgeted $18,000 for this provision, but the bill could be as much as $24,000, according to figures from the Maryland Department of Assessments and Taxation Web site.

Since county property taxes go to help fund the public schools, the charter school and the school board are both in favor of eliminating property taxes on the portion of the building used by the school. This would take an act by the Maryland General Assembly. "The money that they are having to set aside for property taxes [and upkeep] is fairly substantial," said school board member Cathy Allen this week. "That's a significant amount of their per-pupil allocation going to their landlord."

Allen said that the school board would like to see the state forgive property taxes for the school. Funya agreed, saying that the school is working with the Maryland Charter School Network, a lobbying group, to have a bill introduced at the 2010 assembly session.

"We are the first charter school [in St. Mary's County], so this is new for everyone," Funya said.

The school board unanimously approved the lease addendum.

jfriess@somdnews.com