Bad feelings between the Waco Independent School District and the Rapoport Academy erupted this month when the Waco Tax Increment Financing District Zone 1 board, in a 4-4 vote, turned thumbs-down on a $222,500 proposal from the uniquely successful public charter school, which neatly anchors blight-ridden East Waco.

The grant was to help fund renovation of Grant Hall, a former Paul Quinn College dorm, turning it into a creative arts center and dining hall for the academy. The charter school has already renovated three buildings at the once-abandoned campus.

At the same meeting, TIF trustees recommended twice that much money go to landscape and resurface parking at A.J. Moore High, part of Waco ISD.

We understand the problem. WISD Superintendent Roland Hernandez has, after all, argued his point before. In January 2008, he convinced TIF board members to vote against a $100,000 grant to aid Rapoport in renovating a Quinn Campus building for science classrooms.

The WISD, he says, is a major contributor to TIF and shouldn’t be expected to subsidize a public charter school that competes with WISD for students and contributes nothing to the TIF fund.

Rapoport advocates respond just as forcefully. During this month’s meeting, one labeled TIF board members “obstructionist in improving a blight-infested area.”

Yes, the superintendent is persuasive in some of his arguments. Yet, we encourage him — as we encourage the Waco City Council, which has final say on the matter — to consider the bigger picture.

For starters, all of us in Waco — most notably the WISD — should be eager to support anything that benefits East Waco, particularly after the angry charges leveled at Hernandez and the school board when WISD voted to close Wiley Middle School amid great public uproar among East Waco constituents.

Plus, taxpayers certainly haven’t hesitated to offer a heaping helping hand to the school district, approving a $172.5 million bond package in 2008. For WISD to now begrudge a small, academically successful charter school some TIF funds strikes us as pretty petty.

Also, the TIF board has readily contributed to other entities that don’t kick in TIF revenue, including the Dr Pepper Museum.

Finally, we encourage the council to remember much of what was said at last fall’s education summit, led by Waco Mayor Virginia DuPuy:

All of us have a major stake in education, and if we can make headway in one of the most economically pressed areas of our city, benefit local students and help end the blight that mars East Waco, we should not hold back.