Engaging the private sector : using public-private partnerships to meet the facility needs of public school districts

Abstract

The United States is in the midst of an educational facility crisis that is affecting educational achievement and teacher morale. This crisis has resulted from decades of neglect of the country's stock of public school facilities. Meanwhile, population changes are creating new competing needs for scarce government resources and making it difficult to gain voter approval for the issuance of school construction bonds. The severity of the crisis suggests that there are problems with the current method of public school provision in the U.S. Many of these structural problems seem to be solvable with traditional construction management tools. However, the fact that they have not yet been solved suggests the existence of a structural problem in the current methods of facility provision. Some districts are using public-private partnerships to address their facility needs. This thesis studies the literature as well as the cases of Niagara Falls High School in Niagara Falls, NY, Oyster Elementary School in Washington, DC, and Horton High School in Greenwich, NS (Canada), in order to answer the following questions: -- What lessons can be learned from the experiences of school districts involved in public-private partnerships about the management and design of partnerships for school provision? -- What functional role can- public-private partnerships play in preventing future educational facility crises in the U.S.? The evidence from the three cases suggests that one method of preventing future educational facility crises may be to align the interests of school building owners with those of school building users. The three cases studied illustrate that public-private partnerships have the potential to facilitate this alignment of interests. They also suggest that successful partnerships rely heavily on clear goal definition, participatory planning processes, capable leadership, and appropriate role assignment.