After three years of conducting classes at the Oñate Visitors Center, La Tierra Montessori School students and staff will move to their own facility after winter break.
The renovation of the former John F. Kennedy Middle School in Ohkay Owingeh is nearing completion. Finishing touches are being done before the charter school occupies it in early January. The project began in September, La Tierra Head Learner Suzanne Lynne said.
Lynne said they are on schedule to start transferring furniture to the new facility starting Jan. 2, before classes start Jan. 8. She said she feels good about finally having their own academic home.
“I’m smiling big,” she said. “It’s going to make a big difference in academics to have a real home. It’s going to be a real school.”
Since the K-8 charter school’s founding three years ago, La Tierra has been housed at the Center, while officials waited to find their own facility.
“It was wonderful and nice to us, but it’s not really a school,” Lynne said. “It’s got bad acoustics, so it’s bad for a school because it’s loud. It never was intended to be a school, but the new building is intended to be a middle school.”
In September, school administrators split the student body because the growing student population outnumbered the Center’s capacity. La Tierra has 95 students, while the Center has a maximum capacity of 85.
To remedy the problem, first- and second-graders were moved to Northern New Mexico College’s El Rito campus, so more students could be accepted at the Center. Administrators needed the continuous growth to be able to pay for their new facility’s $6,000 monthly rent, Lynne said.
Funding for the new 14,000-square-foot facility’s renovations, a loan totaling $600,000, came from Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo, Lynne said. She said administrators will pay their rent to pueblo officials to pay for the loan.
To be able to pay for the facility’s rent in the coming years, Lynne said La Tierra’s student population should grow to about 200 next school year. She said with the new site, she expects the current population to double and currently, they have saved enough money to continually rent the new school for the school year.
Administrators have a 10-year lease on the facility, managed by the pueblo.
Española-based Avanyu General Contracting managed the renovations.
Avanyu owner Mateo Peixinho said they had to completely replace the old facility’s plumbing, repair the heating and cooling and configure partition walls. He said the facility was built in the 1960s and also housed the Bureau of Indian Affairs offices in the 1990s.
Peixinho said administrators chose to renovate the facility instead of demolishing it to recycle resources and stay green.
“The most environmentally friendly thing to do is to renovate the building instead of demolishing it,” he said. “A lot of charter schools find a hard time finding new homes. With this new building, they’ll have a home for the long term.”
La Tierra is the second local charter school that was struggling to find a permanent home. In September, Cariños Charter School students and staff were evicted Sept. 8 from their run-down facility because of safety hazards identified by the state Construction and Industries Division.
The Cariños community plans to move to Mountain View Elementary School in January.
Peixinho, whose three children are enrolled in La Tierra, said they are currently painting the facility’s interior in preparation of the move-in date. He said in the future, officials plan to develop more learning areas for students at the site.
“We’re working very hard to meet the schedule,” he said. “Everyone has been working very hard to have it on time and on budget. It’s a large campus, so we would be developing the outdoor learning areas and playing areas. It’s a very positive influence in the Valley as a whole.”
Lynne said administrators also expect to establish a greenhouse and a community garden, although ultimately, it all depends on their budget.
“We definitely plan to have a lot of landscaping,” she said. “I’d like to have an edible schoolyard. A goal for me would be a community garden. But, I have to be somewhat realistic.”