El Rito’s Head Start program has not managed to secure a permanent location for its classroom less than a month before the start of its school year.
Head Start hopes to start the school year just after Labor Day, but must first move its portable classroom building elsewhere on the El Rito Elementary campus, somewhere it will not interfere with construction of the elementary’s new facility.
The Head Start classroom is without a home because the spot where it had been located the last five years is now slated to become the new elementary school’s parking lot and school bus drop-off area. The classroom was moved to a temporary location Aug. 6, but squabbling between District administrators and Head Start officials has so far kept both parties from agreeing on a permanent location.
Debra Baca, vice president of non-profit Youth Development, Inc, which operates the Head Start program, asked the School Board at an Aug. 4 meeting to pick out a new site for the Head Start program so it could get to work on its relocation. The Board expressed general support for Head Start and its mission, but did not offer any concrete solutions.
“I’m not an architect, but maybe we can stake out a site,” Board President Joe Gurulé said. “At the same time, we’re not going to do anything for you. The information would have to come from your engineer.”
That statement illustrates what became a long, circular, chicken-or-egg-type discussion in which the District insisted that Head Start’s engineer was responsible for staking out a location, while Baca pointed out that her engineer could not do that until the District gave her a general idea of where to build.
“We can say, ‘This is the piece of land we want,’” Baca told the Board. “And you guys can come and say, ‘You can’t build there.’ I just want to be able to sit down and agree on a location to move once and for all.”
Superintendent Robert Archuleta in turn contends that Head Start needs to conduct its own survey of the property, stake out a permanent site, then collaborate with the District’s architect to make sure it does not interfere with construction.
“They’re going to have to do their own survey, they can’t use ours,” Archuleta said. “We’re supposed to work collaboratively, but they don’t have enough money, they don’t have a place. They’re trying to piggyback off me. I have my own pre-k, I gotta take care of our own.”
Head Start competes for student enrollment with the District’s own preschool program. Head Start enrolled 20 students last year, while the District’s program in El Rito enrolled 10, according to figures provided by each school. The District’s program, which is currently housed in El Rito’s community center, will also accommodate Ojo Caliente preschoolers this year, for a total of 18 students, Archuleta said. Mesa Vista received a $235,859 grant from the state Education Department to add a preschool classroom to the new El Rito elementary, according to District documents.
Head Start paid the District $1 a year in rent under a five-year contract that expired at the end of last school year. The Board voted Aug. 4 to delay approval of Head Start’s contract for this school year until a new location is selected.
Baca said the District’s architect, Vigil and Associates, quoted Head Start $26,000 to incorporate its classroom into the elementary school’s construction plans. Baca turned down the offer and selected a contractor to draw construction plans, move the classroom and set it on a new foundation. That contractor’s quote for construction plans was half as expensive as Vigil and Associates’.
All Baca wants now, she said, is to sit down with District administrators and architects to select a new site, but arranging that has so far been impossible.
“We meet with one person one day, and they tell us one thing. The next day, someone else tells us the opposite,” Baca said. “The Board seems supportive, but we’re getting less cooperation from the mid-level bureaucracy. We didn’t even find out there was a construction project at all until we heard it from parents.”
Baca said Head Start could not afford Vigil and Associates’ price tag, because the moving project is already $31,000 above its initial $90,000 budget.
Demolition of the old El Rito Elementary school starts Monday, Archuleta said. A new $7.3 million school, whose construction had stalled until now due to funding delays, will replace El Rito’s old elementary school.