Massachusetts Charter School Scores Riverfront Facility

It's the kind of school consolidation many charter school operators dream of – a campus that accommodates everybody. In Haverhill, Massachusetts, north of Boston, Hill View Montessori Charter Public School leaders in February 2010 gathered the school from its three sites and moved into their new building.

The two-story, 51,000-square-foot facility is on seven acres on the Merrimack River and cost about $3.7 million, according to Janet Begin, the school’s Executive Director.

The move enabled the school to go from a 100-year-old, 20,000-square-foot surplus public school building, and space at two other sites, to a single campus for the school that is now at its capacity of 296 K-8 students.  The school opened in 2004 as a K-3 with 122 students.

The early 1980s vintage building is in a business park. A not-for-profit foundation affiliated with the school bought the site and is leasing it to the school. The foundation also leases 2,500 square feet to the company that formerly owned the building, International Totalizing Systems, which mainly served the pay phone industry.

The property cost $2.7 million, and another $1 million covered such costs as fees for legal, project management, and architecture and renovation expenses.

MassDevelopment, the state’s finance and development authority, issued $3.3 million in tax-exempt bonds and provided a $412,500 mortgage insurance guaranty to support the project.

The authority issued a statement in November 2009 saying that “an investment in education represents an investment in the future of the Commonwealth, and we’re pleased that this low-cost financing is making it possible” for the school to acquire a suitable facility.

The deal involved a variety of elements. About half of the $400,000 down payment came from school savings from the first five years of operation, with the rest coming from $125,000 raised in the summer of 2009 and $75,000 from an Amelia Peabody Foundation grant, according to Begin. It’s a 30-year loan amounting to $3.3 million, with an initial interest rate of 4.46 percent.

The school enrolls students through public lottery and follows the Montessori method, providing instruction in classrooms with students of different ages. A variety of manipulatives and resource materials are used to aid inquiry and provide concrete understanding of abstract concepts.

Photos were provided by Hill View Montessori Charter Public School.