Pacific Charter School Development

Pacific Charter School Development (pcsd) is accelerating the pace of urban School reform as a non-profit developer for public Charter School facilities. By partnering with some of the nation's highest performing organizations that operate schools serving low-income students, we are helping these groups expand and serve more families. We create small, academically-friendly, sustainable and environmentally-responsible Charter School campuses at a fraction of the "cost-per-seat" incurred by traditional public School systems. To date, pcsd has completed nearly $1 billion in totoal projects, leveraging philanthropy, private financing, and state funding to create 115 facilities serving 46,703 students across multiple School districts and municipalities. At each pcsd campus except one, at least 75% of the students receive free or reduced-price meals through the federal national School lunch program. Pcsd builds public Charter schools that provide smaller, more customized learning environments that are yielding superior academic results. Charter schools are free public schools. Admission is open to all and determined by an unbiased lottery of the applicants to the School. The demand for Charter schools continues to grow as more parents become aware of this opportunity for their children. Pcsd is at the forefront of making this transformative change in k-12 public education. Via the project Development process, pcsd helps schools overcome tremendous barriers to find, finance, entitle, build and secure facilities. Pcsd's Development fee, at 5% of project cost, is below market. As a landlord, pcsd charges a below-market rent. When each Charter School tenant reaches a state of maturity defined by metrics involving academic and financial performance and community support, pcsd works with each School's leadership team to secure long-term financing to support the purchase of their campuses at cost from pcsd. In doing so, Charter schools acquire real assets and long-term balance sheet stability while pcsd recycles committed equity so each philanthropic dollar generates additional Charter School seats many times over. Pcsd's partners continue to include some of the leading foundations involved in urban education reform: the ahmanson foundation, broad foundation, walton family foundation and w.m. Keck foundation. These organizations have been able to seed the activities of pcsd with large enough support to jumpstart pcsd's capital intensive business model.