Desert Academy announces suspension of operations
Head of school asked to develop plan for school’s rising seniors to finish IB degrees
Facing a precipitous drop in enrollment amid continued economic uncertainty in the COVID-19 pandemic, Desert Academy’s board of trustees has voted to suspend its academic operations for six grade levels and will develop a plan to allow its senior class to graduate in 2021.
Desert Academy, a small, high-dollar private school that offers a prestigious International Baccalaureate program, had been facing the prospect of budget cuts and a lawsuit over missed mortgage payments in recent months.
According to a news release, new Head of School Pat Preib was asked by the board Monday night to develop a plan for the school’s 18 rising seniors to complete their International Baccalaureate degrees. The decision to suspend operations for grades 6-11 came after a review of enrollment revealed only about 63 students planned to attend the school.
In a letter to the school’s families, Preib wrote that while Desert Academy isn’t announcing its closure, it will form an exploratory committee to study options in a post-pandemic world.
“We’ll do research to discover what a Desert 2.0 would look like,” Preib said in an interview Tuesday afternoon.
The school will work with families to find other schools, and Preib will help craft severance arrangements for faculty and staff as they look for other jobs, according to the news release.
Preib said students and families were heartbroken by the announcement.
“And yet, they were very supportive — remarkable,” she said.
Preib, who officially took over as head of school just last week after predecessor Yann Lussiez announced he was stepping down, said the school had “deep gratitude” to supporters, friends and alumni for their help through the years.
Founded in 1994 in Lamy, Desert Academy, which charges around $20,000 a year in tuition and fees, moved to a site on Santa Fe’s southeast side in 2012. It conducted school on the land and buildings previously occupied by the New Mexico Academy for Science and Mathematics on Old Santa Fe Trail. At the time, it hoped to grow its enrollment to 250 students, but enrollment was just 128 in grades 6-12 during the 2019-20 school year. At its height, the school had about 200 students.
“An independent school requires what we might call a critical mass of students to successfully operate, because when you’re offering seven grades, expenses like faculty salaries and building operations can’t be cut below a fixed point,” board of trustees Chairwoman Trudy Moon said in the news release.
The school is a party to a lawsuit filed in May. According to the lawsuit, Desert Academy informed Molly Multedo, whose family sold the campus, it would not be able to resume originally scheduled payments in July and asked for a reduced payment schedule to continue through August 2021. After the request was denied, the school informed Multedo it “was not in a position to continue current mortgage payments,” according to the lawsuit.
Preib said Desert Academy was about to move its operations to a building on Camino Entrada formerly used by Santa Fe Public Schools.