8/27/09
The newly re-formed Española Military Magnet School is lacking a military instructor, a computer lab and usable showers in the aftermath of a rushed move to the old Española seventh grade school on Hunter Street.
The new school opened classes Aug. 13 but none of the problems have been take care of, and the Española School Board has been unresponsive to parents’ concerns, according to Calvin Smith and Brenda Lovato, two parents of cadets at the school.
Smith said the school’s showers are infested with mold, prohibiting students from showering after gym classes.
“I mean, come on, that’s a basic right, cleanliness,” Smith said.
Board Vice President Joann Salazar said the school was also supposed to be equipped with a water heater that has yet to be installed.
The District moved the school’s computers to the Española Valley High School Technology Center to be reformatted with a new computer instruction software from the PLATO Learning Company, according to Smith. But those computers have yet to show up in the Military School’s new building, Smith said.
In fact, the District just approved the purchase of the licenses for the software at its Aug. 19 meeting.
“The School Board has been making all kinds of promises and then coming back and saying they don’t have any money,” Smith said. “They tell us, ‘We’ve got it handled, don’t worry about it.’ Yet, our kids have no cafeteria, they can’t shower and they get written assignments in computer class. We’re looking for some accountability from the Board.”
The school is also lacking elective classes aside from Spanish and its yet-to-materialize PLATO classes, meaning it risks losing students to Española Valley High School.
“We don’t have the electives to attract them,” Principal Leroy Martinez said.
Lacking amenities aside, the missing military instructor may cause the United States Army to withdraw its financial support for the school, according to Major Mark Gonzales. Gonzales is the sole military instructor at a school that is supposed to draw students to its Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps (JROTC) program.
The Army shares the cost of military instructors and supplies with JROTC programs around the country but only if they meet federal guidelines for running the program, Gonzales said. The Army may require the school to staff two military instructors in exchange for around $200,000 in federal support, according to Gonzales.
“How can you have a military school with only one military instructor?” Gonzales said.
The Española School District took over the former Española Military Academy in July after the state revoked the Academy’s charter. The District reopened the school as the Española Military Magnet School this school year.
According to a budget Lovato said she and other parents signed off on in late June, the Military Academy earmarked $135,322 for two full-time JROTC instructors, as part of an $854,037.19 total budget. In the final version of the budget the state Education Department approved, the same amount is attached to just one JROTC instructor.
Maj. Gonzales, the only military instructor currently on staff, makes $64,000 a year, including benefits, according to the budget.
The remaining money is being used to pay a physical education instructor, after the state told the District its JROTC classes could not double as gym classes, Assistant Superintendent Dorothy Sanchez has said.
Military School students also started school with no head teacher, though a $10,000 bonus was earmarked for whomever assumed that role, according to Lovato and Smith. Martinez is working only half time at the school, sharing duties between the Military School and Alcalde Elementary.
“Instead of paying for two cadre members, the (District) was only paying for one on the first day,” Lovato said. “You start to lose confidence.”
Smith, a former Academy Governing Board member, said the Academy carried over $72,715 from last year’s operating budget when the school was a charter school. After the two parents discovered the extra money, Lovato asked the District to use that money to hire a second military instructor. She said Maj. Gonzales has two candidates waiting in the wings.
But because the Academy’s extra money came from the state and the District has since taken control of the school, the money legally reverts to the Board, state Education Department spokeswoman Beverly Friedman said.
“That money doesn’t cover even half the cost of getting the school ready,” Board president Leonard Valerio said. “We’ve gone above and beyond call of duty in our responsibility to accommodate (the military school). So really there is no extra money.”
The “close out” costs associated with the Military School’s move have reached $99,245 so far, according to District documents.
The school is sharing space with Los Cariños Charter School at the Hunter Street facility. The latter school has also encountered problems associated with the move, which was opposed by some charter school parents worried about their elementary-age children sharing the same building with the magnet school’s secondary-age students.
The Military School promised an enrollment of 140 to help cover its costs through state reimbursement funds, but its current enrollment is 113, according to Valerio.
“They’re still short a lot of students to justify the additional cost,” Valerio said.
The decision on whether or not, and when, to hire a second military instructor ultimately lies with Superintendent Janette Archuleta, Valerio said.
Regardless, the school will cease to exist if a second military instructor is not hired by January 2010, Gonzales has said. Failing to hire the instructor would also mean the District, after pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into moving the school, would miss out on at least $200,000 in federal cost-sharing funds for the school, he said.
“It’s all politics, like the mafia with a legal touch,” Smith said. “But why should our children suffer?”