Greetings,
Something that will help you in your negotiations with the service provider is a copy of their Franchise agreement with the county, city, township, or town. What ever local governing body is regulating your area. You can find a copy of it at the County Courthouse, usually. In the Franchise Agreement they will have already decided on who pays how much, and for what when it concerns schools, churches, hospitals, hotels, etc,. etc. If the town is large enough and the Agreement fair enough, many times the service provider will offer a return signal for local and independent studio programming, and classroom sharing between schools, colleges and so on.
The Franchise Agreement is Public Domain so it is definitely available to any who wish to review it, however there may be a small clerical fee to have it retrieved for you. I think if you approach them in the manner of someone interested in meeting the obligations set forth in the Agreement by the Cable service provider and the local governing codes as well. Tell them it was explained that you would be able to complete your pre-wire job, locate your AC Power Supply, (if your church and school is large enough you may need one anyway) and work on a rough design with compatible equipment which will be included in the Agreement, this way you will be able to compile a Bill of Materials for your estimated costs. I have witnessed Cable companies reluctantly considering independent MDU's, like small apartment buildings, and large estates until they found out the cable had been installed already and buried out to the service pole. The more you can do the quicker they will respond, sometimes,
I wish you pleasant dealings in your endeavor.
Petergunn.
