More than 50 school infrastructure projects on hold throughout the Española School District until the School Board passes a bond election will likely remain untouched another year.
The Board has no plans to ask voters for construction funds until next September, Board members said. The Board decided not to go out for a bond this year before the 2009 Board elections.
The closest date the District can hold a bond election under state law is mid-May 2009, but Board President Joe Romero said the Board will likely hold off until September 2009.
“It’s the first month of school, parents are taking their kids to school, everybody’s excited and enthusiastic about starting the school year,” Romero said.
Board member Leonard Valerio said the Board will have its hands full the first half of the year looking for a new superintendent to replace David Cockerham, who retires June 30, and will have no time to worry about organizing a bond election.
“If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it right,” Valerio said. “We had a bond fail once. If a second one fails, I want to be able to say we put our full effort into it. If that means we have to wait, so be it.”
At Abiquiú Elementary, the wood playground, purchased and installed by parents, was condemned years ago due to wear and tear, Principal David Maestas said. The school has never had air conditioning and a brand-new wastewater treatment plant “needs fine-tuning” because it was built too large for the school’s needs, he said.
“God willing, the bond will pass one of these days, and we can meet those needs,” Maestas said. “I know politics and animosities have a lot to do with it, but we gotta put personalities and personal issues aside and think of the things these kids are doing without.”
Velarde Elementary needs its cracked basketball court and aging window frames replaced, a new wastewater treatment plant and at least two more classrooms, according to Principal Roberto Archuleta. Chimayó Elementary needs a wastewater plant too, and new air conditioning. Fairview Elementary needs its restrooms remodelled, and San Juan Elementary kindergartners are missing a playground. District voters last approved a bond measure in 2002, for $15 million, out of which the District has about $2 million left. After voters rejected a $21 million bond measure in 2007, Board members shelved plans for subsequent bonds, citing fear of facing a second failed election. When the Board resolved to hold a bond election this past September, that plan ran aground due to a shortage of voting machines in Rio Arriba County caused by the proposed bond measures proximity to the November general election. The Board declined to hold a mail-in election, despite suggestions to do so from the Rio Arriba and Santa Fe county clerks.
Cockerham only raised his eyebrows when told about the Board’s plans. Facilities Manager Paul Salas tacked yet another year onto estimates for finishing construction on a new facility for Alcalde Elementary.
“I guess you can it put down as 2013 for completion,” he said.
The new Alcalde school was initially supposed to be funded with $4 million set aside from the 2002 bond. About half that money has been spent by now, and the project’s cost has escalated to $17 million as the District searched for a location for the new school. The District is currently negotiating a land transfer with Rio Arriba County, in which the District would receive 24 acres of former Bureau of Land Management property given to the County in 2007.
In an Oct. 22 memo, Salas pushed back the school’s estimated completion date to as late as 2012, in part because the County had yet to give the District a deed to the property. Salas said both parties and their lawyers have begun negotiating the terms for the deed since the SUN reported on the delay Nov. 20.
Archuleta, whose school tops the District’s list of capital priorities, said delaying the election date could be a good move.
“First of all, the bond has to pass,” Archuleta said. “Timing is critical. And if the community is feeling negative about passing a bond… I don’t know, right now it’s probably iffy. It’s chancy. I don’t know if it would pass.”
Archuleta blamed negative coverage in the SUN for lack of support for a bond in the community.
The District cannot receive construction funding from the state Public School Capital Outlay Council for replacing Alcalde Elementary — or for renovating Velarde Elementary and Española middle school — until it passes a bond.
The Council commits to funding 62 percent of the cost of all District projects it approves, with two conditions. The District must prove it can pay for the remaining 38 percent, and it must be bonded to capacity — which means the District must be authorized by voters to sell bonds equivalent to 6 percent of the total assessed property value within the District, minus the value of outstanding bonds from previous bond issues.
As of January, the District is $19 million, or 4 percent, away from being bonded to capacity, according to a funding application. That means without passing a new bond, the District can neither cover its 38-percent share of construction costs nor meet the bonding capacity requirement.
The Council funded its share of construction costs for a new Alcalde Elementary in 2005. The project, which the District has been planning since 2002, was then estimated at $4 million. The price has since climbed to $17 million, and the Council would likely help fund much of that cost — but not until the District passes a bond.
The District applied in May for a combined $3.7 million in Council funds to renovate Velarde and the middle school. The Council approved the application, but declined to provide the funds until the District passes a bond, according to Council documents.
That left Velarde Elementary without a new portable classroom building and extensive renovations and Española middle school without a new computer lab and wood and electrical shop classrooms. It also left the District unable to demolish buildings at the former Española seventh-grade school that “have reached the end of their usable life,” according to a funding application.
Public School Facilities Authority Director Bob Gorrell said if the school seeks funding for those or other projects when the Council doles out construction funding next summer, the Council could again award the funding but hold off on disbursing it until the District passes a bond.
Not passing a bond has also left the District unable to pay back a year-and-a-half-old loan from the Council.
The Council loaned the District $739,500 in May 2007 to install new wastewater treatment plants at Abiquiú and Hernandez elementary schools. The District was expected to pay back the loan by Nov. 30 this year, after it passed a bond.
In a letter Monday, both agencies asked the District to repay the money. The District has so far spent about half the money on installing a plant in Abiquiú and purchasing engineering documents for plants in Chimayó and Hernandez, according to Salas.
“I don’t know what they want. We can’t give them money we don’t have,” Cockerham said. “We told them we’d pay it back after we passed a bond, and we haven’t passed a bond.”
Gorrell said the letter was meant as a reminder, and to hear from the District when it plans to pass a bond.