Monte del Sol struggles to save athletics
Charter school faces lagging car-raffle sales, light interest in effort to keep most sports
To hear Robert Jessen explain it, the renaissance his school is about to undergo has the power to transform it into the entity that was birthed into existence nearly two decades ago.
It also has the potential of tearing apart a portion of its public identity.
Hit hard by the steep budget cuts sweeping through the state’s public education system, Monte del Sol Charter is faced with the looming prospect of losing its athletic department for the 2017-18 school year. Funding shortages slashed nearly half of the school’s annual $92,000 athletic budget in the fall semester and the projections for next year are even worse.
There is enough money to finish out the current school year, but anything less than a dramatic financial windfall will not be enough to bring sports back next fall. In essence, it would be a return Monte del Sol’s roots as an academiconly institution.
In his third year as Head Learner at Monte del Sol, Jessen said it is now the school’s goal to have its athletic department become dependent on the willingness of the families of the student ath- letes to finance the teams themselves. In other words, no money will be allocated from the school to support sports.
Founded in 1999 as a charter school under the purview of Santa Fe Public Schools, Monte del Sol’s intent was to further the education of students in
grades 7-12 by stressing literacy arts and integration. Jessen said it was never the plan to fund sports.
“As time goes by, people begin to think it’s [an athletic department] part of the mission of the school,” he said. “Ideally I’d like it to become clubs, where parents support it instead of taking money from academic resources. When the school provides the funding, parent clubs tend to atrophy a little bit.”
The warning signs came last semester, Monte del Sol athletic director Alfredo Lujan said. He was told that his annual budget was being reduced by $40,000 to $52,000. All but $7,000 of it was earmarked for salaries of the school’s coaches and athletic director.
“When I first heard we were down to 50 [thousand] I thought we could live off of that,” Lujan said. “But when I heard that more than three-fourths of it goes to salaries, I thought there’s no way we can do it on $7,000.”
Monte del Sol’s problem is logistics. The school doesn’t have a gym and has nothing in the way of athletic facilities. The majority of the available funding after salaries goes toward renting gyms for volleyball and basketball, paying for officials at home games and covering the cost of travel.
The New Mexico Activities Association stepped in and gave Monte del Sol $2,000 to offset the cost of paying for officials, but even that doesn’t go very far. A typical home game for varsity and junior varsity costs roughly $200 to cover the cost of four referees.
Jessen approached former boys soccer coach Mazatl Galindo just before the state tournament last fall and told him the money was gone, and he’d be lucky to have the resources to finish the season. Galindo responded by encouraging parents to drive their players to and from games within 60 miles of Santa Fe, effectively eliminating the expenditure of renting buses or vans for travel.
Lujan said some trips, such as to district rival Dulce, costs about $700 while others, such as Cimarron, can run as much as $1,000.
At no point, he said, has the school ever bought uniforms or equipment for any of its teams. That all comes from the financial support of the players’ families.
“These are dire times right now, and all of us are trying to do our best to keep this thing alive,” said Mark Salazar, a parent of a varsity athlete and one of the main boosters of the school. “I’m like a lot of parents, I think. I never assumed there wouldn’t be the possibility of athletics, but here we are.”
Salazar has joined forces with several other parents to form a booster club whose primary goal was to raise money for the respective teams. The usual bake sales and concession profits only went so far, he said.
“We needed something big,” Salazar said. “You can only sell so many Frito pies before you realize you’re only making a couple hundred dollars.”
Enter former St. Michael’s and Moriarty athletic director Joe Butler, now an administrator with the NMAA. During his time at Moriarty, the school raised funds by purchasing a car and selling raffle tickets. Monte del Sol did the same, getting a deal on a Ford Escape from Capitol Ford with the hopes of turning that expense into a profit.
Tickets are selling for $50, and Lujan said the goal is to sell a minimum of 2,000. To cover the cost of the raffle, which includes the car and small cash payouts for a few runner-up winners, the school needs to raise a minimum of $23,000.
So far, raffle sales are lagging. Badly.
“We’re crossing our fingers, but it’s been a struggle,” Salazar said. “It’s basically a small group of parents trying to keep this thing going. It’s a struggle to get parents from some of our teams out there to help. Honestly, we’re getting more pushback than we would like at this point.”
Lujan has called an emergency meeting at the school Saturday morning to discuss the financial situation with the parents and guardians of all student athletes.
Darlene Maestas is the chairwoman of the Monte del Sol Foundation, which oversees the mortgage to the school. She said she sees the value in the balance of academics and athletics. As the parent of a varsity athlete, she is among that group of dedicated parents holding onto the idea of saving sports.
“I feel like for the people getting involved, there is a camaraderie, a common goal,” Maestas said. “There are so many people coming forward and working hard for this.” But, she said, it’s getting to the point where even the boosters are noticing a rift.
“I think there are certain programs, there are certain groups who will go to town for this,” Maestas said. “Then there are programs that aren’t.”
Lujan said the byproduct could very well be the death of some sports and the survival of others. The drawing for the vehicle is March 31, and as of Friday, more than three-fourths of the tickets remained unsold.
Lujan claimed has done some of the heavy lifting himself, having raised more than $10,000 through a GoFundMe account. That helped stem the tide for the winter sports of boys and girls basketball to survive their seasons.
The only spring sport offered at Monte del Sol is baseball, and he said there is just enough money left to keep it afloat.
All bets for next year are off, he said, pending the results of the raffle. Having grown up in Pojoaque and been a coach for 18 years at Santa Fe Prep, one of the things Lujan has learned is how to stretch a buck. He has also learned it can’t all fall onto the parents.
“It’s a hard thing,” Lujan said. “It’s my belief that one of the things the school has to do is place a value on athletics. They have to ask themselves whether they are willing to put money into it, maybe prioritize it for the good of the kids. We all know how important it is for them.”
Lujan said roughly one-third of the approximately 350 students at Monte participate in at least one sport. With the loss of athletics, the school is at risk of losing some students to other schools — a move that will bring more financial headaches since the state’s funding to a charter school is based on enrollment figures.
Jessen said he is not entirely concerned with that prospect since it is within NMAA guidelines to allow students from a charter school, private school or one who is home-schooled, to participate in a sport for the public school for which he or she is zoned so long as the student athlete’s own school does not offer that same varsity sport.
“We are going through a renaissance that will take us in a new direction,” Jessen said. “Essentially any money that we put into athletics, we cannot put into academics. As a mission, we cannot sacrifice the academic nature of the charter.”