Major changes are coming to Air Academy High School — just not how school administration originally intended.

After securing $49 million in funding through a bond vote last November, Academy D-20 will now rethink its rebuild for its oldest high school after losing over $70 million in federal funding for the project.

Because of its location on the U.S. Air Force Academy, the school is eligible for the federal Public Schools on Military Installations (PSMI) program. The program, through the Defense Department, helps finance capacity deficiencies in the public schools located on military installations.

D-20 was invited in 2023 to participate in the program for both Air Academy High and Douglass Valley Elementary School.

Academy D-20 begins design process for new PK-8 school at Douglass Valley site

To prevent federal dollars from funding an entire project, one requirement of the program to participate is a 20% match from the local school district.

In the case of D-20, this match was secured through a bond vote that also included upgrades throughout the entire school district. The ballot language approximated that $191 million would be provided through the PSMI program and matched with $49 million by the school district, if passed.

However, on May 22, the school district was notified of a shift in funding parameters for the federal program. Program leaders communicated that federal matching funds for the Air Academy project would now be capped at $120 million.

As a result, the new total to meet the program’s requirements was reduced to $30 million.

During the D-20 Board of Education’s regular meeting Thursday night, Deputy Superintendent and Chief Financial Officer Becky Allen told board members that federal energy requirements had changed, which reduced their projected costs since their design proposal was presented.

Since the bond passed in November, the net-zero and photovoltaic energy requirements were rescinded. Additionally, the district learned that the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification is not required by the PSMI project or the Air Force Academy as they originally thought.

As a result, these considerations reduced the total building cost from $238.4 million to $209.9 million in 2027 dollars. Allen explained that these previous projections also factored into the district’s $49 million total referred to in the November ballot language.

“And so, what the federal government told us is ‘We now have to cap the amount of money that the DoD Public Schools on Military Installations program is able to give to District 20,” Allen said. “So, that’s a change from what we were anticipating for this project, where we were never given a cap.”

Allen added that the plan remains to use all $49 million earmarked for the rebuild, since they still fall under the ballot language’s intended purpose.

“We can use those dollars [and] we now have a total project for $169 million,” she said.

Douglass Valley received $48.9 million from the PSMI program, with the district covering $12.2 million for a rebuild and expansion to a K-8 grade school.

Allan noted that this project has not been impacted, since their design proposal has already been submitted and approved.

The plan going forward is to continue with the rebuild for Air Academy, though certain design elements will now be removed or adjusted, like reduced square footage, though no specific changes have been confirmed.

Upgrades and renovations detailed last fall include a new Career and Technical Education Center that will be available to all D-20 high school students. The new “Center of Excellence” will be an addition to an existing center at Liberty High School that houses automotive technology, construction technology, certified nurse assistant and emergency medical technician certification pathways.

The new center will offer pathways for aviation, advanced manufacturing/mechatronics, hospitality management/culinary, and computer programming/AI technology.