7/9/09
The future of the Española Military Academy is hanging by a thread this week.
The Española School District is still waiting for state approval to transform the defunct Academy into a military-focused middle and high school under full District control.
The proposal passed financial muster and was on the desk of state Education Secretary Veronica Garcia Tuesday morning, District Assistant Superintendent Dorothy Sanchez said. Sanchez said she didn’t expect a decision until the end of the week.
But time is quickly running out. Major Mark Gonzales, who ran the Academy’s military programs, said the Army is willing to transfer the program from the Academy to the District, but it can only wait so long. Schools around the country are vying for Army support, and classes start in roughly one month.
“If it doesn’t happen, then I’m the one that’s gotta notify them to pull the plug,” Gonzales said. “We’ve got ‘til about no later then July 10. If I don’t hear anything by the 10th, then I’m probably gonna get a directive to turn in my stuff.”
For three years, the Academy had been moving up a nationwide waiting list for becoming a full-fledged Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC) program, Gonzales said. Española recently jumped from 11th to fourth place and is being targeted as one of several high-risk populations, he said.
If the program is successfully transferred to the District, it is set to receive a new level of federal support in January 2010. The Army would begin pitching in half the cost of two military instructors’ salaries and would provide free uniforms and military and educational equipment worth about $250,000 annually, Gonzales said.
Gonzales said if the proposed Española Military Magnet School does not receive state approval, the District could accept the JROTC program at Española Valley High School. Otherwise, the military-education project is essentially over, he said.
“Without that military program, we pretty much don’t have a military school,” Gonzales said.
Discipline, Not Soldiers
The District’s proposed military magnet school could accept 140 students in seventh through 12th grades, Sanchez said. Seventh- and eighth-graders would participate in the Air Force’s Civil Air Patrol program, while ninth- through 12th-graders would participate in the Army JROTC, she said.
Sanchez said a magnet school is simply a school with a specialized focus, in this case a military one. The point of the Española Military Magnet School would not be to prepare soldiers, but to provide a highly structured, focused and disciplined atmosphere, Sanchez said.
“We’re opening it up to anyone that would like to apply,” Sanchez said.
The District is proposing to house the magnet school at the former Española seventh grade school, on Hunter Street, along with Los Cariños Charter School. Cariños offers bilingual elementary education from kindergarten through third grade.
District Projects Manager Paul Salas said the building is almost ready for the military school to move in, but he still needs to install a security door to separate the middle and high-school students from the elementary students.
The District will also look for highly-qualified teachers to fill four core-curriculum positions, and all military instructors will be certified through JROTC and Civil Air Patrol, Sanchez said.
That would be a significant change from the Academy, which employed uncertified staff, many of them from the New Mexico National Guard, to enforce discipline, run drills, monitor the classroom and sometimes teach class. Academy classes were conducted through a self-paced computer program called E-20/20, with a skeleton crew of teachers on hand. Sanchez said the E-20/20 contract has expired and will not be renewed.
Alcalde Elementary Principal Leroy Martinez would split his time between the new magnet school and Alcalde, and the magnet school would have a dedicated full-time office manager, Sanchez said.
District Business Manager Charlene Sanchez said the projected budget for the magnet school is $854,000.