Milagro school moving date delayed
Construction issues could keep middle school on former Capshaw campus until fall 2019
Students who are eager to move into a brand-new Milagro Middle School building on Llano Street at the start of the next school year will have to wait at least another six to 12 months due to delays caused by major changes to the campus construction plan and schedule.
Santa Fe Public Schools Superintendent Veronica García told the school board earlier this week that “it’s unlikely we will open the school next fall.”
In an interview Wednesday, García told The New Mexican the new school campus might be ready in December 2018 or January 2019, but “that may not be the best time to make that kind of shift.” Instead, she said, “We are looking at [fall] 2019.”
The news raised concerns among school board members, who had approved a controversial plan to close two midtown middle schools and merge their students into the new Milagro school despite fierce opposition from the community. At the time, they promised a new facility, where students would have more programs to choose from.
Milagro, which opened in August on the campus of the old Capshaw Middle School, combines the populations of seventh- and eighth-graders formerly zoned for Capshaw and the nearby De Vargas Middle School — two groups of students that critics of the merger had said were too different to make up a unified new school. Such a move would destroy the community spirit on each campus, critics said.
But the school board and district leaders moved forward with the plan, citing declining enrollment at both schools.
The district eased the transition by phasing in the merger, with incoming seventh-graders in the two zones all attending Capshaw last year and De Vargas eighth-graders and Capshaw eighth-graders completing middle school at their original campuses. Milagro opened this year with about 615 seventh- and eighth-graders — and expectations that it would move into a new building at the De Vargas site next year.
The school board chose the De Vargas site for the project because initial studies showed the district could remodel most of the existing building and construct some additional wings to create Milagro at a lower cost than revamping Capshaw.
“But as contractors got into it,” García said, “it became evident that they could not do that, so the whole architectural plan had to be redone.”
Earlier this year, crews demolished the more than half-centuryold De Vargas building and drafted a plan for a new facility.
Executive Operations Director Kristy Janda Wagner told the school board Tuesday that the construction project, scheduled to start in early 2018, will take 13 to 15 months.
District officials expect the new school to cost about $29 million, with $2 million from a 2013 property tax bond and the bulk of the funding from a bond issue that school district voters approved in February.
The district’s Citizens Review Committee, which reviews and advises the school board on capital projects, will look at whether the project will cost more than the original estimate, García said.
The district will hold a series of community meetings, she said, to let parents, teachers and students know about the delay after the winter break, which begins Friday and runs into early January.
Board member Maureen Cashmon expressed concern about the delay, saying Tuesday that the vote to support Milagro was “a very difficult decision for the board and the community.”
She urged district leaders to do a better job of keeping the board updated on such delays. Cashmon said, “I would have liked the opportunity to say, ‘Wait a minute, we need to figure it out. We made a commitment to the community.’
“The calls that I get from my district [schools] that feed into Milagro voice concern that you took those two communities and you gave us a school that many people did not want,” she added.
Board member Steven Carrillo said he feared the district could lose current sixth-grade students who were planning to attend Milagro next year — at a brand-new facility — to private or charter schools because of the construction delays.
District communication on the issue must include outreach to those students and their parents, he said.