Outside the Budget Box—Public/Private Partnership as a Creative Vehicle for Finance and Delivery of Public School Facilities

Our public schools face almost irresistible pressures to upgrade and expand facilities and deliver better, more advanced, and higher-quality education while tax revenues and therefore budgets are shrinking each year. Class sizes grow in old and outdated facilities, and municipalities and school districts have few resources to address the pressing space needs. There is little public support for increased funding. However, there is a way to deliver educational facilities that uses less public capital than traditional project finance. Public/Private Partnership (PPP) is a delivery method that has traditionally been used on large infrastructure projects in developing nations, in order to allow more development for less public capital investment while maintaining the overall quality of construction. In recent years, PPP has gained acceptance in Europe and now in the United States as a means of public school finance and construction. This paper discusses PPP, its fundamental principles, and the various ways it can be employed in the delivery of educational facilities, as well as its advantages and disadvantages.