Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Education topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
School P3 work group recommends feasibility study; suggests $250,000'$400,000 analysis to test public-private partnership option
Summary
A work group convened under 2024 state legislation recommended the district commission a comprehensive feasibility study—paid locally—to test whether a public-private partnership (P3) could accelerate school construction and maintenance; the group noted state funding would require legislative change.
Calvert County Public Schools' P3 work group has recommended commissioning a comprehensive, locally funded feasibility study to determine whether a public-private partnership (P3) could help the district accelerate school construction and manage life-cycle costs.
Shashida Warner, director of Planning and Construction for Calvert County Public Schools, presented the work group's final report to the Board of County Commissioners on Jan. 28. The work group, created under 2024 state law, studied the fiscal and operational viability of design-build-finance-maintain (DBFM) models and examined national and Maryland precedents.
Warner said packages must typically include at least $100 million in projects or be bundled to reach that scale. The work group noted Prince George's County Public Schools (PGCPS) as a local precedent: PGCPS used a DBFM approach for multi-school packages supported by the state's Bill to Learn Act funding and staggered availability payments.
The work group recommended a feasibility study costing an estimated $250,000'$400,000 and a roughly six-month timeframe. The study would perform a value-for-money analysis, identify candidate projects (for example, schools with high facility-condition indices or inadequate educational sufficiency), assess financing structures, and develop performance metrics and risk allocations. Warner said state statute currently allows P3s but does not make state CIP funding automatically available; the work group noted legislation would be required for the state to commit funding to a P3 package.
Why it matters: The county faces rising replacement costs and an elevated facility-condition index; staff said traditional, pay-as-you-go funding can lengthen replacement timelines and increase escalation costs. A properly executed P3 could transfer some long-term maintenance risk to a private partner and accelerate delivery, but it would create multidecade financial commitments and higher private-capital costs.
Ending: The work group endorsed conducting the feasibility study using local resources if the board and school officials want to pursue the option. Commissioners thanked staff and reiterated that a feasibility study would be a tool to inform—not to obligate—the county to a particular delivery model.
