Sarah Welsh
and Jose de Wit
SUN Staff
Moving delays forced Los Cariños Charter School to start its school year Tuesday in a temporary location at Española seventh grade school’s former campus on Hunter Street.
The charter school will hold classes at the campus anywhere from one to five months, Los Cariños founder Terry Brennan said.
Brennan had initially expected to complete the school’s move from its current location at San Juan Catholic Parish to a new campus in Santa Cruz, just west of the intersection of State Roads 76 and 106, halfway through the summer, with months to spare for staff, parents and volunteers to fix up the new campus before the start of the school year.
Instead, red tape has delayed the move for months. Los Cariños must resolve sewage and drainage issues, relocate two portable buildings and conduct a state-required traffic study before it can settle into its new digs, Brennan said.
A week before the start of its school year, the school faced two unappealing options: open a month late, or beg the Española School District for a temporary home until Los Cariños’ new campus is ready to open, Brennan said in a small public meeting held July 31 at the school’s future site.
Brennan wound up opting for the latter, sending a letter Aug. 4 to Superintendent David Cockerham to be allowed to hold classes for a month at the newly-vacated Española seventh grade school.
“I haven’t even read the letter,” Cockerham said before an Aug. 6 meeting in which the School Board authorized Brennan’s request. “The answer is yes.”
The Board agreed to lease Los Cariños 11 classrooms at the former seventh grade school, and added that the charter school could stay there until Christmas if necessary. Los Cariños will only have to pay for utilities, prorated according to its square-foot usage, Brennan said.
Los Cariños Principal Vernon Jaramillo said students will learn the academic portion of Los Cariños’ farming curriculum at the temporary location, but the school’s livestock and greenhouse will stay where they are for now at San Juan Parish. Jaramillo said he would consider busing students to San Juan part of the school day to spend time with the farm animals.
The school’s farm currently includes three goats, four rabbits, a pig, six ducks and 24 or so chickens, all of which would move to Santa Cruz when the school relocates there later this year, Brennan said. The school hopes to expand a new animal to the roster each year.
The farm complies with limits established in Española’s development code, which allows a certain amount of animals per square foot on residentially-zoned properties within city limits, and Brennan said he is confident the school’s neighborhood would welcome the animals.
“The people behind us have ostriches and horses,” Brennan said. “It looks like a pretty animal-friendly area.”
Agriculture and bilingual instruction are two main components of the school’s academic mission. Students are taught half the school day in English and half in Spanish. The school currently enrolls 140 students kindergarten through third grade, and plans to add an additional grade each school year.
The two most pressing issues left to resolve are sewage and traffic, Brennan said.
The school eventually hopes to hook up to a city-proposed sewage line along State Road 76, but that project is still in the early planning stages. Jaramillo said the school is seeking a sewage permit, but its current enrollment may exceed the capacity of the property’s three 1,000-gallon septic tanks. If the permit is denied, the school would have to install an additional tank.
The state Highway department has also required the school to conduct a traffic study and pay for installing safety mechanisms. Brennan said he does not know how much the study or safety mechanisms would cost, but the school would likely have to pay for them in monthly installments.
The charter school also has to move two more portable classroom buildings from their current site; Brennan said Western Structural is handling the move and he expects the buildings to arrive any day.
The same company stalled for months in repairing two portables it set on faulty foundations late last school year at Española Valley High School. The state Construction Industries Division red-tagged, or temporarily condemned, the portables until they were re-set on new foundations in late July, District Projects Manager Paul Salas said.