Where Borrowing $105 Million Will Cost $1 Billion: Poway Schools
Last year the Poway Unified School District made a deal: It borrowed $105 million from investors to fund a final push in its decade-long effort to revamp aging schools.
In many ways, the deal was unspectacular. Some of the money was used to pay off previous debts from delayed and over-budget construction projects. The rest went towards finishing upgrades that Poway taxpayers had been promised as far back as 2002. To a casual observer, it was just another school bond.
But Poway Unified’s deal was far from normal.
In 2008, voters had given the district permission to borrow more money to finish its modernization, and they had received a big promise from the elected school board in