WESLACO – IDEA Public Schools plans to expand into Texas beyond the Rio Grande Valley in the next two years with the help of a new $41.4 million construction bond, said IDEA founder and CEO Tom Torkelson.
Charter schools face significant hurdles just to get financing for proposed construction projects, and Torkelson will be lobbying the state Legislature during the next few months to change that process.
But he said the new bond should push IDEA past its "2012 Plan" to launch 22 schools in the Valley and allow the charter to revise its master plan to operate 38 schools by 2015.
"Not all of those 38 schools are going to be just in the Rio Grande Valley," he said. "By 2013, we anticipate that schools in different regions in the state of Texas will be coming online."
Torkelson would not cite specific areas for expansion, but he did not rule out San Antonio or Houston, cities with large low-income populations.
The new construction bond – the third and largest in the charter’s 11-year history – will allow IDEA to build two new campuses in Edinburg and Weslaco, both of which should open next year and push the "2012 Plan" to 24 schools instead of just 22.
The Alamo and Pharr campuses will also get more classrooms, and a brand new College Preparatory location in San Juan will help accommodate that campus’s growth, said chief financial officer Wyatt Truscheit.
"Paying close attention to costs … lets us do a lot with less," Truscheit said. "We actually build classrooms, so we can put more kids in the schools. We get more kids ...
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