In fall 2018 IDEA Southern Louisiana opened two new campuses in Baton Rouge, IDEA Innovation (more on that in a later post), and IDEA Bridge Academy (Bridge).\u00a0 The Bridge campus was financed using senior and subordinated debt to construct Phase I of two phases for what will ultimately be a K-12 campus in North Baton Rouge, and opened\u00a0 in 2018 serving grades K-3, and 6.\u00a0 For FY2021, Bridge is serving grades K-8 and enrolls just under 1,100 students, having expanded two grades per year since opening.\u00a0 Filling up its Phase I elementary and middle school facility this year, Bridge is ready for the second phase of its expansion into the high school grades.<\/p>\n
In October 2020, IPS Enterprises, Inc. closed on a refinance and new money financing that will fund the $7.2MM construction of the Phase II high school facility at Bridge.\u00a0 IPS conducts the non-charter activities, such as real estate financing, for IDEA Public Schools’ expansion outside of Texas.\u00a0 Louisiana was the first state into which IDEA expanded, back in 2018.\u00a0 In securing this financing, Bridge is set to be able to open a new building on its North Baton Rouge campus into which the high school grades will expand beginning next year.\u00a0\u00a0Bridge is a Type 1 charter school authorized by the East Baton Rouge Parish School System.<\/p>\n
There are several reasons Louisiana was IDEA’s first state for expansion.\u00a0 Only 1 in 6 students in Louisiana graduated “college ready” in 2017. Only one third of public school students have access to an “A” or a “B” school in Baton Rouge and New Orleans.\u00a0 Rates of childhood trauma in Baton Rouge and New Orleans are 2-4 times the national average, with about 38% of students witnessing domestic violence, 40% witnessing violent crimes, and 18% witnessing murder.\u00a0 IDEA worked closely with its partner, New Schools for Baton Rouge, which provides both financial support as well as real estate and site selection assistance with their knowledge of the Baton Rouge market, in deciding to come to Baton Rouge.<\/p>\n
But despite these grim\u00a0 statistics, both Bridge and Innovation ranked in the top 10 schools in the State for growth in academic results.\u00a0 As new schools, absolute performance is not where it will ultimately be, given where most of these students started from upon entering Bridge or Innovation.\u00a0 IDEA Southern Louisiana achieved the top growth school ranking in Baton Rouge for both Math and ELA.\u00a0 Over 84% of Bridge’s students are African American, almost 80% qualify for FRL, and about 10% receive Special Education instruction.\u00a0 Bridge is making a difference in the lives of students who need it most.<\/p>\n
That is in part why IPS’s lending partners stepped up to the plate.\u00a0 CIT Bank, formerly Mutual of Omaha Bank, had made the senior loan for Phase I, and increased their loan to help finance the Phase II expansion of the high school facility.\u00a0 BlueHub Capital, a CDFI which lends to many low-income communities across the country, brought in subordinate debt, along with their lending partner Hope Credit Union.\u00a0 The Charter School Growth Fund had been one of the Phase I subordinate lenders, and retained a portion of their initial loan in this financing.\u00a0 All told, these lenders committed $21.86 million in total financing to a school only in its third year of operation, which is really something because the revenues of Bridge are the only revenues securing the financing.\u00a0 Their support of, and commitment to, IDEA’s expansion in Louisiana is helping make a huge difference to the students Bridge is serving.<\/p>\n
Buck Financial served as Financial Advisor to IPS.\u00a0 Hunton Andrews Kurth served as counsel to IPS.\u00a0 Kutak Rock served as counsel to CIT.\u00a0 Krokidas & Bluestein LLP served as counsel to BlueHub.\u00a0 Regions Bank continues its role as Custodial Bank begun with the 2017 Phase I financing.\u00a0 \u00a0Project Management Services, Inc. of Austin, who has worked with IDEA on over 100 construction projects, is serving as Owners Representative.\u00a0 Congratulations to the students, families, and staff of IDEA Southern Louisiana and Bridge Academy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In fall 2018 IDEA Southern Louisiana opened two new campuses in Baton Rouge, IDEA Innovation (more on that in a later post), and IDEA Bridge Academy (Bridge).\u00a0 The Bridge campus was financed using senior and subordinated debt to construct Phase I of two phases for what will ultimately be a K-12 campus in North Baton… read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buckfinancial.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buckfinancial.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buckfinancial.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buckfinancial.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buckfinancial.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=384"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.buckfinancial.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":388,"href":"https:\/\/www.buckfinancial.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384\/revisions\/388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buckfinancial.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buckfinancial.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buckfinancial.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}