GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Here’s one way the jobs bill headed for the president’s desk today will affect New York City: it unfreezes more than $1 billion in school construction bonds the city needs to fund its capital plan.

The bonds were effectively frozen because of a significant flaw in last year’s federal stimulus bill, which set aside $22 billion over two years for school districts to sell interest-free bonds to fund school construction. As Pro Publica reported late last year, many banks refused to buy the bonds because they were funded by tax credits that investors found worthless.

The jobs bill the Senate passed today aims to solve that problem by using a direct subsidy, rather than a tax credit, to pay banks for the bonds. (The House passed a similar bill last month and President Barack Obama is expected to sign it.)

New York City, like many school districts around the country, had delayed issuing any bonds because of this problem, according to the mayor’s preliminary budget plan released in January. In the mayor’s plan, the Office of Management and Budget noted that it expected Congress to revise the school construction bond program and predicted that when it did, the city would successfully be able to issue all $1.4 billion in bonds. (more…)