Relief for crowded Amy Biehl school
SFPS board caps enrollment at south-side elementary; new overflow students will go to Piñon
Parents of students attending the Amy Biehl Community School at Rancho Viejo were surprised to learn at a meeting earlier this week that the district, in an effort to ease overcrowding, had been considering a plan to either alter the school’s zone boundaries and send some of their children to another south-side facility or abolish transfers into Amy Biehl from other schools. The school board decided Tuesday night to instead cap the enrollment number for each grade level at Amy Biehl and send overflow students who are new to the school’s zone — a couple of hundred square miles of west-central Santa Fe County — to Piñon Elementary, an older school about four miles north. That move, decided in a 4-1 vote, takes effect immediately but will not affect any of the 543 students currently attending Amy Biehl. Still, it could be a disappointment for families
with children moving into communities the school serves, such as the Rancho Viejo subdivision, La Cienega, Madrid and Cerrillos. It also could lead to siblings in the area attending different schools.
Santa Fe Public Schools for years has wrestled with cramped classrooms at certain schools — particularly on the city’s south side and southern developments outside the city, where the population has grown — while other
schools have seen enrollment numbers stagnate far below their capacity or even decline. Amy Biehl Community School, which opened in 2010 in sprawling Rancho Viejo to help address the area’s growth, is now 28 students over capacity, district officials say. Without a solution, that number is expected to increase in the coming years.
Unlike some school campuses that allow portable classrooms to be placed in parking lots or on open land, Amy Biehl has an agreement in place with Rancho Viejo, which provided property for the school, that prohibits portables at the site, school board member Maureen Cashmon said Tuesday.
As a more permanent fix for south-side overcrowding, the school board took action Tuesday to reclaim a school building it owns about four miles south of the city on N.M. 14. The building, which lies inside the Amy Biehl school zone, is now the home of the Turquoise Trail Charter Elementary School, whose lease expires June 30, 2021. Board members voted not to renew the lease, though the decision could set up a legal fight for the space between the district and the state-chartered school.
About 10 parents and students from Amy Biehl Community School spoke to school board members Tuesday, asking them not to make a decision that would force children to relocate — especially fifth-graders who, after spending sixth grade at Piñon, would then have to move to another school for seventh grade. Some also complained about the swift pace with which the issue moved forward. Parents received notice Friday of a Monday event meeting at the school to discuss possible changes the board would take action on just a day later.
The board moved quickly on the issue because the interzone transfer process for the district ends in mid-February, and the district wanted to give families time to prepare for a possible transfer.
“Forcing students to attend an out-of-zone school … will have a tremendous negative impact,” parent Francine Jacquez told the board during a public comment period ahead of the vote on Amy Biehl.
Her daughter, Hailee, cried at the meeting, saying, “I like Amy Biehl. I don’t want to leave.”
Leonard Jacquez, another parent, said an option to deny transfer requests for students zoned to attend other schools — especially transfer denials for students like his two children, who have attended Amy Biehl since they were kindergartners — was “breaking our heart, messing with our lives.”
After the vote, Jacquez said he was pleased that the board took the parents’ concerns into consideration and chose an option that board member Steven Carrillo described as “displacing the least amount of people.”
“I think they made a good decision,” Jacquez said, “and I’m happy about that.”
Cashmon cast the only vote against the move. She voiced a preference for an option to redraw attendance boundaries for Amy Biehl, a longer-term answer to overcrowding that would have affected up to 60 students.
The enrollment cap and a decision to prioritize current transfer students over new enrollees could result in recent Rancho Viejo residents being blocked from the school and split-up families, she said.
“This family just bought a house in August or September [in Rancho Viejo], and when they go to enroll their child, they may find there is space in the third grade but not in the fifth grade,” she said. “So, we are going to divide those families apart.”
Other board members told Cashmon it will be up to parents to decide whether to enroll children at separate schools in such a case — or whether to send them both to Piñon.
None of the five board members favored the option of revoking transfers, a move that would have affected 27 current students.
Amy Biehl Community School and Piñon Elementary have some similarities. Each serves a diverse population of students, and both are considered some of the district’s most successful, receiving B’s in the state’s most recent round of A-F grades.
Parents who spoke at Tuesday’s board meeting said that while Piñon is an equally good school, they did not want to put their children through the stressful process of leaving behind friends and extracurricular programs at Amy Biehl.
Tuesday’s vote included an amendment asking district officials to conduct an “aggressive home visiting” campaign to ensure that all the students who attend Amy Biehl are zoned to do so.
In the interim, the school will remain slightly over capacity, which García said is “tough but doable.”