Charter School Feasibility Study in the Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH Metro Area

Schools, charter included, in the Boston area

Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH registers 25 loans for schools, charter schools among them, covering elementary and secondary education from FY2017 through FY2026, totalling $25.4 million. Here the class sits 20th of 39, yet the metro ranks 9 of 154 when areas are compared by these loans. The $200,000 median is just 0.29x the typical national school loan, while the central half runs from $50,000 all the way to $1.3 million. A location quotient of 1.17x shows schools slightly heavier here than in the national book. Nothing is labelled distinctive.

Programs, brands and holders

SBA 7(a) covers 18 of them, with the other 7 under SBA 504. Franchise affiliation is 20.0%. Eastern Bank reaches five loans, holding 5 worth $340,000 in SBA's records of current holders; the entry is a holding and nothing more. Middlesex County has 10 of the loans, and Essex County and Norfolk County have 5 each. A $200,000 median beside a central half that reaches $1.3 million says that half of these loans are small while some finance buildings.

A thin year-by-year record

FY2017 prints 6 loans and $712,000. In FY2018, FY2021 and FY2023 the schools class drew no loans: 0 loans and $0 for each. Years not named hold too few loans to show and are not zero. No outcome rate is printed for the Boston cell; Loan Analytics' own rule needs 30 school loans disbursed in FY2017 to FY2021, and there are fewer.

What a charter school study must test

A coding limit shapes everything here: the code is one that charter schools and private schools share, so the two cannot be pulled apart, most charter schools being nonprofit organizations that SBA does not lend to. A study for a school project must therefore begin with eligibility, meaning whether the operating entity is one SBA can finance, before any enrollment forecast. Then it tests enrollment against capacity, per-student funding or tuition assumptions supplied by the sponsor, staffing cost, and the facility cost against a loan whose central half reaches $1.3 million, with debt service coverage that holds if enrollment fills slowly. Placement in the metro follows project county.