State construction grant will upgrade 93-year-old school

Annual grants recommended by the state’s school construction board include a $14.9 million project to renovate and expand a 93-year-old junior/senior high school for the Edison district in rural El Paso County.

The state Capital Construction Assistance Board this week recommended approval of 26 projects totaling $90.2 million, including $47.5 million in state funds and $42.6 million in local matches. The State Board of Education and a legislative committee have to review the recommendations next.

Edison’s school was built in 1922, with a major addition constructed 47 years ago. The district’s application to the Building Excellent Schools Today program includes a long list of structural, safety, utility, and instructional deficiencies that will be remedied by the project. The district has 194 students, 39 percent classified as at-risk.

The BEST program, created by the legislature in 2008, was designed especially to help small districts like Edison that have aging buildings but insufficient financial resources to build on their own. Edison, for instance, was required to provide matching funds of only $274,202.

The state portion of BEST is funded primarily by annual revenues from state school lands. In past years the program has been able to award more grants because sales of bond-like instruments were used to fund construction, with the debt paid off over time. For instance, $273 million in projects was recommended in 2012.

But BEST has reached its legal ceiling of $40 million in annual bond repayments so now can make only cash grants, mostly for smaller renovation projects.

Two projects on the priority list recommended this week are larger than Edison’s, including a $27.5 million project in the Roaring Fork district and $16.7 million school addition in DeBeque. But in both those cases the districts are putting up the majority of the money.

State officials estimate Colorado has an $18 billion backlog of school replacement and renovation needs.

Get the full list of recommended 2015-16 BEST grants and learn more about this year’s applications here.