The Cariños Charter School will not return to its old home any time soon.
First Judicial Court Judge Sarah Singleton denied, at a May 13 hearing in Tierra Amarilla, the charter school’s motion for summary judgment, which insisted on Cariños’s right to access currently unused Española School District facilities, including the old Middle School East.
“It seems to me that this motion raises as many questions as answers,” Singleton said. “The motion for summary judgment is denied.”
In September 2014, District officials locked out Cariños students and staff from the old Middle School East building because of safety hazards identified by the state Construction and Industries Division.
After switching locations multiple times in fall 2014, the charter school found a new home at the recently vacated Mountain View Elementary in Cordova.
Cariños’s lawyer, Ronald Van Amberg, said according to state statute, District officials are obligated to allow the charter school to use currently vacant facilities.
“The purpose of the motion was for the determination of the court, that the legislative pattern establishes, that when a school district has a facility available, not being used for school purposes, and the charter school within that district needs a facility, it has to lease to the charter school,” Van Amberg said.
He said at this point, the Middle School East building is not being used for educational purposes, so the District has to allow them back in.
Van Amberg said Cariños’s move to Mountain View Elementary hurt the school’s enrollment numbers.
“We were in a situation where we were in the middle of Española,” he said. “We have a lot of students and we were conveniently located for parents that were working, who are primarily Spanish-speaking, who are in lower-paying jobs. We had the right to continue in that school.”
According to a report released by Cariños administrators in April, based on the school’s 80th and 120th day counts, the school has 105 students this school year, compared to last school year’s 222.
The move has also irked teachers and staff members.
“We also have situations where school staff are getting annoyed because they can’t get busing and they pay a lot for gas,” Van Amberg said. “Also, this facility is half the size. We have been damaged by the shift in location and by the size of the facility. It’s a nice facility, but it’s very limited.”
But the District’s lawyer, Gabriella Stewart, said officials formulated the current school year’s budget last year, before the charter school was forced out of their old facility.
“He’s saying that this has some serious financial impacts,” Stewart said. “But, we are operating on prior year budgets. So at the moment, it’s in my understanding that they have not seen any reductions at this school.”
She said state law does not require school districts to present a list of vacant facilities from which charter schools can choose.
“Part of the Legislature’s intent is to find homes for charter schools,” she said. “I definitely don’t think that the legislative intent was to divest a school district of its property forever.”
Stewart said District officials went out of their way to house the charter school by closing Mountain View Elementary and transferring students to Chimayó Elementary.
“They’re now saying that they’re unhappy in this new location,” she said. “We moved our children from that facility to make room for them. We had about 50 students that had to be relocated.”
But Singleton said she thought they were set to close Mountain View regardless of whether Cariños would relocate there. Stewart agreed, but she said the District expedited the closure so the Cariños community could begin classes at the school by Christmas break.
For Singleton, deciding on the motion was based on state officials’ red tagging of the Middle School East.
“Suppose the school owned a building that had been condemned and suppose the charter school says, ‘You’re not using that. Can I have it?’” she said. “That’s exactly what we have here. It’s a condemned building and I don’t see how you can say that the school has to provide it to you.”
Upkeep costs
As part of the motion, Cariños officials also asked Singleton to identify whose duty it was to maintain the Middle School East.
Stewart said it was stated on the two parties’ lease agreement of the old site, that it was charter school officials’ duty to keep the building in safe condition.
“What the lease provided was that Cariños acknowledged that the premises were in good condition when the lease began,” she said. “They agreed. The second part of that is that Cariños was required to maintain that the facility is in safe condition. That means anything located in the interior walls of the building.”
But Singleton said Cariños administrators did not have sufficient knowledge of the property’s rundown condition before signing the agreement.
“It must be because they couldn’t see or didn’t have the knowledge to associate, because some of those things, some of the defects, were clearly in place before this school year,” Singleton said.
Stewart insisted Cariños officials should have told District officials of needed repairs. She said they never once did.
“I don’t think we could have guessed major repairs needed without prior notification from the tenant,” she said.
Singleton ordered the two parties to continue mediation until August. If their issues are not resolved by then, she might set a further hearing.