Let great ideas emerge — for our children and schools

Iagree and support Santa Fe Public Schools board President Kate Noble’s suggestion that a task force be put together to look at Nava Elementary and other “low-enrollment” schools (“Let’s not talk about closing schools,” My View, Oct. 6). However, I would frame the task at hand differently and use this as an opportunity for innovation in a city that markets both difference and innovation for tourism and investment. In fact, it’s the perfect opportunity to do both.

I have long pushed for closer and deeper collaboration among governing bodies, as well as between them and communities. That was my primary motivation for the work I did to create the Community-Schools Partnership in Albuquerque, which has now inspired a statewide initiative. This is why I was so perplexed and annoyed that there seems to be little if any consideration for what each entity is doing in Santa Fe.

For the last several years, a coalition of organizations led by Chainbreaker Collective, a local environmental justice organization, have engaged the city on its plans for the former College of Santa Fe land. There have been various iterations and pronouncements about what should be there, but affordable housing has persistently been mentioned. It would seem that if this is in the works, that an elementary school adjacent to this property makes sense. That is, unless the school district knows something we don’t.

Fears of gentrification have been at the forefront of community engagement and conversations, and one of the quickest ways to gentrify an area is to destroy institutions that sustain local residents. Nava Elementary School is one of those; in fact, it is one of the few that responds consistently to local immigrant communities in the area. Closing Nava Elementary would scatter those children and their families in ways that would add to the trauma they already experience. It would destroy social and cultural capital, the foundations for building community. So, we are talking about families and communities, not just balancing enrollments.

The last rounds of school closings devastated both Chicano and immigrant communities and networks. These recommendations under consideration will further segregate and stratify Santa Fe, and clear the way for developers to do what they will with our College of Santa Fe campus, our corazón de Santa Fe.

I would suggest that rather than creating a committee whose basic task is to figure out how and when to close schools, we create an Intergovernmental Community Council to look at how to best leverage the few public investments that exist in working-class communities and also increase their number.

Rather than looking at Nava Elementary as a school building, look at it as a civic/public space that can respond to a variety of community dreams. As each entity finds value from this new perspective, the overall value and impact of Nava Elementary increases, as does the need to maintain and expand that impact.

Nava Elementary School could be a perfect location for a lab school, for example, connected to the Higher Education Center and the various teachereducation programs in the region. Santa Fe Public Schools could create teacher/ civil service pathways at each high school, with Nava serving as a teacher training center with another one on the south side.

Once we get the right people in the room, especially those from the neighborhoods that will be most impacted by development, many more great ideas will emerge for all of our civic spaces and buildings. Think different, Santa Fe!