The coalition of education advocates that is leading the charge to address an estimated $2.8 billion in improvements in city school facilities praised Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's proposal to create a funding stream for the projects by increasing the city's bottle tax.

But the group, Transform Baltimore said in a release Monday-- shortly after Rawlings-Blake announced the plan that you can read about here -- that the mayor's plan to raise additional revenue for school facilities was just a first step.

“The dedicated revenue from the bottle tax can be used to leverage an estimated $155 million in
bonds, as long as it is stable revenue,” said Frank Patinella of the Transform Baltimore campaign, in the statement sent by the group. “The next step will be to use the city and state’s current annual capital budget funds to borrow $1billion now; with that, we will be well on our way toward the full $2.8 billion needed to fix our schools.”

According to our story Monday, "Rawlings-Blake urged the council to act quickly to increase the bottle tax from 2 cents to 5 cents as part of a three-pronged plan that would allow the school system to float more than $300 million in bonds." 

Transform Baltimore had asked the mayor to commit to an alternative financing model that would allow renovation and construction projects to take place at a faster pace and on a larger scale than the city's current funding levels. You can read more about that model here.