School board reverses Mandela enrollment change
Move follows outcry over policy to require students’ siblings apply through lottery process
The Santa Fe school board voted last week to no longer allow siblings of students attending Mandela International Magnet School to enroll without applying through the random-selection lottery process.
The decision met with opposition from students, parents and Mandela Principal Ahlum Scarola. They asked the board to reverse the enrollment system change, and during a study session Tuesday, the board responded to that request with a 3-2 vote to overturn last week’s decision.
Tuesday’s action came after an hour of sometimes complicated and heated debate among board members over whether prioritizing siblings for admission to a school creates inequity in the enrollment process. Had the board stuck with its original vote, Mandela would have been the only school in the Santa Fe district without such a sibling admission policy.
Some state-chartered schools in the city also have policies allowing siblings of current students to automatically enroll.
Superintendent Veronica García said last week’s vote, which followed a decision earlier this year to revamp the way the school conducts its lottery system, was “an error that should not even have come [forward], but it did.”
Board member Steven Carrillo agreed and apologized for what he called a “hasty” decision. Board members Kate Noble and Rudy Garcia joined him.
Board members Lorraine Price and Maureen Cashmon were not so easily swayed, however, saying that allowing siblings to dodge the lottery process creates an unfair enrollment system.
“Because your brother goes to that school, you get to go to that school?” Price said, asking how other students could have an equal chance to enroll under such a policy.
About 20 Mandela parents, students and staff members who attended Tuesday’s meeting gave a collective round of applause after the vote.
“I want my kids to be in the same school,” said Sharada Hall, the mother of a Mandela ninth-grader. She hopes her fifth-grade son, who attends the private Fayette Street Academy in Santa Fe, will be accepted at Mandela in two years.
“The thought of our whole plan being so up in the air and not knowing where we are going to be was upsetting,” Hall said.
Logan Ammerman, a sixth-grader at Carlos Gilbert Elementary School, said he was counting on going to Mandela because his older sister is enrolled there — and because of that expectation, he did not look into other options for seventh grade or submit an application for charter school lotteries.
It’s not too late to start looking, but time is running short. The deadline for applying to enter the Mandela lottery is Friday, for example, and many other charter schools have lottery deadlines later this month.
It’s been a bumpy year for parents and students at Mandela, which serves just over 200 students in grades 7-11 and plans to expand next year to 12th grade and see its first class graduate.
The school, which opened on the campus of the now-defunct De Vargas Middle School facility in 2014 with a curriculum aligned with the International Baccalaureate program, moved to the former Academy at Larragoite building on Agua Fría Street last sum-
mer just as founding Head Learner Tony Gerlicz retired.
Superintendent García replaced Gerlicz with Benjamin Hairgrove of Texas, but Hairgrove lasted only one semester before García replaced him with Scarola, who had been serving as principal of Acequia Madre Elementary School.
In late January, the school board voted 3-2 to overhaul Mandela’s lottery system. While the process had been zone-based — meaning applicants were categorized by their school board district, and an equal number of students from each district were chosen randomly to attend — board members replaced that system with a broader, districtwide lottery.
The change made the enrollment process more equitable, board members said, because the number of students applying from each district had varied widely, creating an imbalance that district officials didn’t expect when the system was created in 2014.
Students hoping to attend Mandela next year can apply online at mims.sfps.info through Friday. The lottery will take place March 2 at the district’s Educational Services Center, 610 Alta Vista St.