School District Finance
Public school districts currently face critical challenges to funding educational needs, including demographic changes, shifting funding priorities, and securing taxpayer approval for voted bonds and levies. Since Pacifica’s founding in 2011, our public finance team has helped school districts navigate these obstacles and build educational communities where generations of students can thrive. In the past five years alone, we have helped school districts in Washington successfully issue more than $1.2 billion in bonds and propose more than 60 voter-approved enrichment and capital levy ballot measures.
Bond Issues and Other Financing Tools
Pacifica serves as bond counsel and disclosure counsel to school districts of all sizes across the State of Washington. Our school district public finance team has extensive experience with the full range of tax-exempt and taxable debt-financing tools available to school districts under state law, including:
- Unlimited tax general obligations bonds
- Refunding bonds
- Limited general obligation bonds
- Qualified school construction bonds
- Bond anticipation notes
- LOCAL financings
- Equipment financing leases
We have experience with publicly sold and privately placed debt with a variety of underwriting and financing structures, including negotiated sales, competitive sales, limited offerings and bank placements. We assist school districts with debt issuances of all sizes, small and large.
Our work on school district debt issuances encompasses all legal aspects of the financial transaction. Throughout the process, we proactively advise our clients on the state law, federal tax law, and federal securities law provisions that apply to the financing options under consideration. We also draft and review all legal documentation required for closing, including bond resolutions, preliminary and final official statements, legal opinions, bonds, tax certificates, and other certificates and documents.
Bond and Levy Propositions
We regularly advise our clients through the bond, enrichment, and capital levy approval process. We answer questions on permissible uses of levy funds under state law, and the legal requirements for bond and levy passage. We prepare and review election resolutions, ballot language, explanatory statements, for/against committee resolutions, and board support resolutions. We also advise our clients on compliance with public disclosure law governing use of public facilities in school district campaigns, including review of elections-related materials.
Post-Issuance Compliance Advice
We regularly assist with creating and updating custom post-issuance compliance policies and procedures to help districts ensure they meet the post-issuance obligations set forth in their bond resolutions, continuing disclosure undertakings, and tax covenants, as well as requirements arising under federal tax and securities law regulations. After a bond closing, we advise our clients on allowable uses of bonds proceeds, changes in use of bond proceeds or bond-financed facilities, and arbitrage rebate issues. We also assist with IRS audits of tax-exempt bonds.
Communication and Ongoing Training
To ensure our clients are aware of key developments in public finance, we proactively communicate through, among other things, e-alerts, email updates, briefing papers and memos. In addition, we offer customized training to clients on a broad range of topics such as the fundamentals of bond issuance, federal tax and securities law, bond and levy propositions, and Public Disclosure Commission (PDC) compliance. Our attorneys also regularly present on public finance-related topics to education organizations and conferences, including educational service districts, the Washington Association of School Business Officials (WASBO), and the Washington State School Directors’ Association (WSSDA).
