PEC Rejects 8 of 9 Charter School Plans
Just one new state-chartered school will open in New Mexico next year, after the Public Education Commission this week denied eight of the nine applications seeking approval.
The approved charter, Health Leadership High School, will be in Albuquerque’s South Valley and will focus on helping students who have struggled in traditional school settings get on track to careers in health professions. It will open next year.
Of the eight school applications that were denied, four had links to out-of-state groups or companies. Those applications were particularly scrutinized by certain public school advocacy groups and by the Legislative Education Study Committee, which raised the spectre of back-door privatization and the loss of local control.
PEC Chair Andrew Garrison said this year’s applications were rejected for a variety of reasons. He said some applicants didn’t seem to have a solid plan, while others were
applying to open charters in communities without a clear need.
He said, for example, the PEC rejected two applications for schools that would be based in Taos, because Taos already has numerous charters that aren’t at full enrollment capacity and that offer similar programs to those proposed.
Garrison said some commission members were concerned about online schools, particularly those that purchase curriculum from forprofit companies.
New Mexico has 96 charter schools.
Tony Monfiletto, who founded Amy Biehl charter high school and is head of ACE Leadership charter high, was involved in founding Health Leadership charter high but will not be its principal. The school will use a model similar to the one at ACE, which stands for architecture, construction and engineering. That school aims to help struggling students learn the skills needed for careers.
Like ACE, the Health Leadership school will not just teach vocational skills, but will teach state academic standards through the lens of career skills. So students will learn science by learning about anatomy and nutrition, and social studies by learning about health risk factors in New Mexico and media literacy.
Monfiletto said he chose health because there are job opportunities in the field for students.
“The health sector is such a fast-growing industry, and we work with kids who need to know that there’s a career coming,” he said. “When you work with kids at risk, there needs to be relevance in their school experience.”
The school has established partnerships with the local health industry to make the curriculum as useful as possible for students seeking jobs.
Charters in New Mexico can seek approval either through local school districts or through the state. Albuquerque Public Schools did not get any applications this year, so the Health Leadership school will be the only new charter in Albuquerque.