Mosier School may get grant back

The Renew America’s Schools grant, some $860,000 in reimbursements through the Department of Education (DOE), disappeared in February along with all MCS’ contacts at the DOE. Most of the program’s employees and its website were gone. Phone calls and emails went unanswered for about four weeks.

For this small school built in 1923, the grant means a chance to replace a century-old asbestos-coated oil boiler that costs more than $30,000 annually in heating oil, plus an HVAC system and possibly solar panels.

“We have had some meetings with DOE staff in the past few weeks. At this point, we will continue to complete all required reporting, continue with our project in good faith, and follow the grant award rules and regulations,” Dawkins later added.

Brent Foster of Green Thumb Projects LLC, who wrote the grant, reached out to the more than 20 other schools nationwide who also lost access to this program. They group has been in weekly contact since early this year.

“It’s hard to have any certainty that anything we advance money on right now is going to get paid back,” Foster said on March 18. DOE was processing receipts and making payments at the time.

Foster’s child attends MCS. He volunteered to write the grant after sweltering through a back-to-school meeting. “It literally felt like it was a hundred degrees in the school library. Everyone was sweating. It was absolutely uncomfortable ... God, I was only there for just an hour. The kids ... how they would stay in there and function all day was just beyond me,” he said.

A $500 million program, Renew America’s Schools was created by a bipartisan bill to promote the installation of energy improvements at K-12 public schools throughout the U.S. So far, 410 facilities have received awards.

“This has been the only way to fund these long-overdue basic improvements,” Foster said. The uncertainty was like “feeling like the ground is shifting under your feet.”

The grant has to be completed by the end of 2025. Operating on a shoe-string budget, the school must submit receipts for refund from DOE.

MCS does not have an ounce of insulation in the roof or ceiling, making temperature control tough. There’s no ventilation system. The stair treads are worn out. The windows are as old as the rest.

“It’s basically a very uncomfortable building at most times of the year,” Foster said.

So the board had decided to fund the project with its emergency reserves if the grant didn’t come through.

“We talk with schools in Kentucky, and Idaho, and other districts that also received this grant, and they are under the same challenges that we are ... How do you meet your grant deadlines when to do so means you’re gonna have to spend money you don’t know if you’re every gonna get the money back?” Foster said March 18.

Now Dawkins has hope that MCS will, indeed, get its money back.