As Traverse City Area Public Schools (TCAPS) officials near a self-imposed deadline to decide the fate of Old Mission Peninsula School, a new offer to purchase the building could put more options on the table.

The Old Mission Peninsula Education Foundation, a nonprofit community group working to keep the elementary school open, sent a $750,000 offer to TCAPS this week to buy the building outright. The offer requests that TCAPS transfer the “clear and unencumbered title” for the building to the foundation, and that TCAPS continue to provide educational and operational services to the school through June 2018.

Foundation representatives first met with TCAPS and Peninsula Township officials in August to discuss using $800,000 in donations to purchase the building with a deed restriction and cover short-term operational costs. Negotiations between the parties have continued since that meeting. But TCAPS’ desire to have a long-term, sustainable funding plan in place by November 30 that would cover multiple years' worth of Old Mission's $400,000 annual overhead – or else move forward with a decision to close the school – has proven to be a sticking point for both sides.

“The biggest complaint we’ve heard across the community is that $800,000 is only a Band-Aid for two years, and how can we make it sustainable for eight or ten years?” says Allison O’Keefe, president of the foundation. “We want a sustainable plan as well…but TCAPS is saying it needs all that money prefunded upfront. We can’t purchase the building and also prefund operations for six or more years (by the November 30 deadline). But if we can purchase the building, we can get to work on fundraising over the next two years…I think if we own it, people will get excited and start donating.”

But the unknowns attached to future fundraising pose a challenge for TCAPS, according to Superintendent Paul Soma; the district must finalize reconstruction plans this fall for Eastern Elementary School. TCAPS is planning to reconstruct Eastern beginning in spring 2017 and continuing through summer 2018, with Eastern students moved temporarily to Bertha Vos during construction. The district’s original intent was to build the school to accommodate 500-550 students, with both Eastern and Old Mission students moving into the new building in fall 2018 and Old Mission closing.

With the size of the new building contingent on how many students will be housed there, TCAPS can’t afford to adopt a wait-and-see approach over the next two years on whether fundraising will be successful enough to keep Old Mission open, says Soma. “From my perspective, it’s been a very consistent message as to what the requirement would be to keep the building open. It doesn’t appear a plan is emerging that’s going to create a sustainable solution (by the deadline). Absent something substantively changing, at some point we have to move on as an organization.”

But there is at least one option on the table that could resolve the impasse – albeit one with risks and challenges for both organizations. Absent a long-term funding plan for Old Mission by November 30, TCAPS’ board could vote to move ahead with closing the school in June 2018 as planned. Reconstruction plans for Eastern would also proceed as planned, with a building large enough to accommodate 500-550 students.

At the same time, TCAPS could accept the purchase offer from the foundation, which has only requested that the district commit to providing educational services to Old Mission through June 2018, as it already intends to do. If the foundation is able to raise enough funds by June 2018 to keep the school going, TCAPS could extend its educational contract at Old Mission for further years. If fundraising falls short, Old Mission students would move to Eastern as planned.

The risk for TCAPS would be building a larger-than-necessary school at Eastern: What would the district do with the extra (and costly) space if Old Mission stays open? Soma acknowledges there’s at least one possibility: “if we had excess capacity, we could move TAG (talented and gifted) students from Central Grade School to Eastern,” he says. The district could also consider using the extra space for centrally located Intermediate School District (ISD) programming, according to Soma.

The risk for the foundation would be failing to raise enough funds to continue operations at Old Mission beyond June 2018 – in which case it would own a building, but have no school – or TCAPS refusing to extend its educational contract even if the foundation had funding to pay for it. Though neither side addressed the possibility in detail, the foundation could consider launching its own charter school at that point. O’Keefe says the Old Mission Peninsula community could also use the building for other educational purposes.

“We want to continue our valuable relationship with TCAPS,” she says. “But we want to pursue the building regardless (of the future relationship)…because we feel there is value in that building as a community center. We want something education-based there. There are a lot of options on the table.”

TCAPS’ finance committee is set to discuss the purchase offer at its November 2 meeting. A full board discussion will follow on November 14.