Charter Schools

Blazing a New Creative Trail …We will Get it Done!

Cedar Ventures Charter School Focus

The principals of Cedar Ventures (Karen Kassouf and Jim Jackson) have decades of experience prior to the forming of Cedar Ventures in 2000 and have executed and closed over $1.4 billion of bond transactions for not-for-profits and for-profit entities. Our backgrounds include the disciplines of law, banking and accounting.

In the last 10 years, Cedar Ventures has executed, overseen and closed multi-million dollar transactions involving the raising debt and equity for the acquisition of and ground up construction projects for senior housing, work force housing and student housing.

Many of the same specialty lenders, bond buyers, and investors for these ground up construction projects also finance charter schools including new, start-up schools. We have a rolodex of funding sources on which to call including non-traditional funding sources and know their criteria. We are collaborative and work alongside bond underwriters.

In 2019, Cedar was asked by an Issuer to become involved in Charter School Financing because the Issuer was impressed by Cedar’s tenacity at completing a start-up, ground up construction work force housing transaction that others had tried and failed; the transaction had been floating around for 2-4 years. Cedar got it done!

Cedar has been an attendee and sponsor at charter school conferences in the Southeast including in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Tennessee.

Cedar has relationships with charter school consultants and former executives to assist with charter school transactions. We are ready to go!

If you are thinking of leasing space or building a facility for a charter school, please call us or send us information with respect to our below criteria:

  • Experienced Management with a track record of successfully managing charter schools;
  • Dedicated Sponsor;
  • Strong Board with legal and financial acumen;
  • Favorable political climate at both the state and local level;
  • Stable economy and ample supply of students; favorable market assessment;
  • Ratios such as Operating Revenue Per Pupil, Debt per student, Total Debt per square foot and total square foot per student.
Cedar Ventures

An Innovative Firm

We are not siloed to a specific product as is the case with larger firms. The number of years that we have worked on financings, over 30, provides us a framework to be creative as we have ‘seen a thing or two’.