Blueprint

Expanding educational opportunities for students in under-resourced communities

PCSD

Finance Team Tours Northern California Sites

by

The PCSD Finance team met up with our Northern California team for a comprehensive tour of in progress charter school facility projects. They started the day at Navigator Schools Gilroy Prep which is set to expand capacity to support TK students. They then proceeded to Voices College-Bound Language Academies in Morgan Hill where groundwork has been laid to support modular buildings. The new campus is scheduled to open for the 2024-2025 school year. They visited Navigator Schools Hayward Collegiate which will be adding TK students. The day concluded at Bay Area Technology School (BayTech Charter School), where construction is underway for a new school at The Palace Theater in Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood

Navigator Gilroy Prep
Voices Morgan Hill
Navigator Hayward Collegiate
BayTech Charter School

 

Finance Connected to Real Estate

by

Who did you meet with today?

Today I met with Eric Relos, Tina Lin, and Anna Olsen who are all connected in different levels of financing real estate.

Where do they work? What does the company do?

Anna and Tina work with PCSD, and Eric works for Capital Impact, which is an organization that helps the development of a project by financing loans.

What did you learn today? What were some highlights?

Today I learned about three different positions of real estate related to financing. The project manager supports architectural design and mapping, finding the problems and solving them. The finance director helps “translate” approvals or problems that may occur, and lenders, help support funding the project from the beginning and forward until the project has been completed.

As Anna, the Project Manager, completes a project or runs into a problem, she has to relay it to Tina, the Director of Finance, who supports Eric, a lender, by helping him understand the problems and ways to avoid or improve them.

What insights did you gain into the field of real estate development? 

Something I took away from this is that it takes a long process to approve a project and its funding, anything can hinder the approval.

What did you find the most interesting about the field in the field after today?

Financing plays a huge role in developing, completing, and revising a project. If the budget was to ever be exceeded, then you must already have prepared at least the same amount of money you put down as a contingency.