St. Paul Public Schools plans to forgive $31,000 in unpaid rent owed by a Woodbury charter school.
Woodbury Leadership Academy was sharing space inside the state-owned Crosswinds Arts and Science School when the St. Paul district bought the building for $15.3 million in early 2018.
Dozens of district employees moved in that summer, abandoning leased office space on Plato Boulevard in St. Paul.
Meanwhile, the charter school moved out and refused to make its final July 2018 lease payment.
The school charged that “its operations, use and enjoyment were disrupted by the District’s activities,” the St. Paul school district said in materials for Tuesday’s board meeting.
In an email Sunday, Woodbury Leadership Academy’s board chair, Mandi Folks, said there was “no friction” with the school district. She said the rent reduction was agreed to because the district was remodeling the building during the charter school’s final month there.
The St. Paul school board will be asked Tuesday to approve a settlement agreement in which the charter school will pay just $10,264 of the $41,058 that the school district says it owes.
Woodbury Leadership Academy moved last year into the former Globe University building in Woodbury.
The former Crosswinds building, now called E-STEM Middle School, will open to St. Paul district sixth-graders next month.
The school district bought the Woodbury building to relieve a middle school enrollment crunch and negate the need to build a new East Side middle school. The building, built in 2001, was available because state officials moved to shut down Crosswinds over declining enrollment and poor academic performance.
