Schoolhouse Rumbles

The question of how to deal with dwindling enrollment at city middle schools goes before the Santa Fe Public Schools Board of Education this evening for a vote. The district has settled on the need to consolidate Capshaw and De Vargas middle schools and has proposed to begin by merging the seventh grade classes from both schools at Capshaw this fall, while eighth graders will stay at their respective schools to finish. Mandela International Magnet School would remain at De Vargas for the next year as well.

"This decision is just to merge the two schools, but it does not state which facility they be located in or what the program or curriculum would be. All that would be decided during the planning year," says Susan Duncan, president of the Santa Fe Public Schools Board of Education.

She says the final location for a single middle school will only be determined after more research and discussion during an upcoming planning year that would see a principal and team of teachers assembled to map out the new middle school.

This temporary solution was one that came from the principals of the three affected schools, both Capshaw and De Vargas, and Mandela, which has been sharing space on the De Vargas campus with the middle school while waiting for a campus of its own.

The resolution also authorizes Superintendent Joel Boyd to spend a year planning the new middle school in a way that "will focus on optimizing staff culture and current school strengths, location, academic, athletic and other programs, feeder patterns and capital resources."

The Santa Fe Public Schools Citizens Review Committee (CRC) is now tasked with reviewing the needs of various facilities at hand and is also supposed to recommend where to locate the new school and phased facility improvements for "the best-suited new comprehensive middle school campus based on facility master plan building evaluations and staff recommendations." The district expects to invest in safety improvements, functional and program design, and rebranding, the money for which will come from the remaining balance from the 2013 General Obligation Bond and from the pending 2017 GO Bond.

While building a new campus was at one time in consideration, Duncan says, that idea has since dropped off the table as too expensive.

The conversation seems to be leaning toward De Vargas.

"Capshaw is not large enough to accommodate all of the students, ultimately, so if the final school were to be located at Capshaw, there would have to be some kind of new construction or something to accommodate it," Duncan says. "De Vargas is large enough to accommodate the whole population, so that would be, in that sense, the size of the facility is actually better to accommodate the whole school, but that's not part of the decision right now. That's left to be decided by the CRC."

A study session on what to do with the middle schools, in which anyone and everyone could present ideas, ruled out rezoning because it would fail to see either school campus fully enrolled. The session also dismissed the notion of adding sixth grade to either school as something elementary school parents simply didn't want. A De Vargas teacher made a presentation on the cultural resources from that school's location, including proximity to Santa Fe High, Santa Fe University of Art and Design, the Higher Education Center and the Art Institute. But settling on that campus, again, will hinge on more research and discussion.

"Nobody likes their small school closed, and both schools had a strong identity, a strong culture. Teachers and parents and kids felt very loyal to the school, and I think some people are still very resistant," Duncan says. "But I think other people have come around and have accepted the idea that the merger really needs to happen. We just do not have the population to have two comprehensive middle schools in that part of town. Particularly for De Vargas, they just cannot offer what needs to be offered in a comprehensive middle school."

As people have come to terms with the idea the merger needs to happen, she adds, they've shifted to concern about how that process moves forward and who leads it, as well as what kind of programming and curriculum it produces.

"Personally, I feel it's an opportunity to do something really new and innovative and creative," Duncan says. "Rather than just continuing what's been, it's an opportunity to think about, what is a model middle school for Santa Fe?"

The Board of Education meeting starts at 5:30 pm, Tuesday, April 12, at the Educational Services Center at 610 Alta Vista.

Santa Fe Reporter