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BELLEFONTE -- The Bellefonte Area School District is considering a joint public meeting with two other area school boards to discuss concerns about the potential Health Services building opening at CPI in the coming years.
During the Sept. 5 board meeting, council members listened and discussed the new building, sharing concerns about costs, timelines and other aspects of the project.
The concept of the building is to create a new space to house more adult education health science programs
In order to pay for this building, the plan is to use grants as well as a USDA loan totalling $7.7 million. But along with this are timeline restrictions -- the construction needs to be completed by September 2025, or else the interest rate on the loan will reset to then-current rates instead of the locked-in 2.25 percent.
Bellefonte's portion of the bill would be around 47 percent because of Bellefonte's secondary enrollment at CPI.
Superintendent Tammie Burnaford and council member Kim Weaver brought information to the board on Tuesday night regarding the project.
Though there was no updated information on the grant funding, they did relay a request to have the three schools that are involved with the cost of this project -- Bellefonte Area School District, Penns Valley Area School District and Bald Eagle Area School District -- to all have a joint public board meeting to discuss their options.
According to Weaver, both Bald Eagle and Penns Valley are leaning towards the project moving forward.
"There's a lot of pros, a lot of cons. I'd like to see us at least have a meeting to hear it out and then go from there," said Weaver.
Just like the last time this topic was discussed, the major issue the board members had with the project was the fact that they were a K-12 institution funding an adult education program, and that the financial structure of the deal had changed from the last time they'd heard of it.
"I'm not opposed to a joint meeting. My concern is I need to know what the financial structure is because it changed from that first (meeting.) The information you brought last time was completely different. I'm very concerned about us being a K-12 institution financing an adult education program," said Board President Jon Guizar.
A suggested solution to this concern, according to Weaver, was the introduction of secondary education programs into the new building.
"They talked about possibly using the building for secondary education and creating new programs... I like the idea, I know what they were trying to do and I appreciate it. But there's security issues. You're putting high school students with adult students," said Weaver.
Weaver was tasked with generating interest from the board regarding this potential meeting, and will return at some point in the near future with dates to work with.
"Kim and I are just sharing highlights of these JOC meetings, it would be good for the whole board to hear discussions," said Burnaford, indicating that there is a lot of "behind the scenes" work being done in regards to financing, contracts and more.
"We're looking at a lot of money for an elementary school. While I'm absolutely all for CPI, I also think this board's first obligation is to the elementary school that we've already started. That has to be the first consideration that we make," said board member Andrea Royer.
Board member Nate Campbell questioned Bellefonte's enrollment numbers in the post-secondary program at CPI, and was informed that there was no surefire way to tally that number.
"You don't know, they're adults. They may have a Bellefonte address and live in Bald Eagle," said Burnaford.
"A couple of years ago when this was all brought to us, they assured us that there would be no financial outlet. It was just in the event that there was some kind of default that we would be liable for it. Now the financial (plan) has totally changed," said Guizar.
The importance of the joint meeting was made clear during this week's discussion.
"I think this is a great discussion. The other boards have to hear (our concerns,)" said Weaver.
A date, time and location for the joint meeting is currently in the works.
The Bellefonte School Board will meet again on Oct. 3 at 7 p.m. at the Bellefonte Middle School.