FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL: TEACHERS GET READY
About 13,000 SFPS kids head back to classrooms today
DonnaMarie Gallardo, one of more than 700 seventh- and eighthgraders expected to attend Santa Fe Public Schools’ new Milagro Middle School in 2017-18, was a little sad that she would be celebrating her 12th birthday Wednesday — the first day of school for most students in the district.
She also was anxious about starting the year at an unfamiliar campus. Still, she was looking forward to the first day at a brandnew school.
“I’m excited and nervous,” DonnaMarie said Tuesday as she visited Milagro to make sure her classes were set.
“I’m excited to get out of the house and meet new friends,” she said, “but I’m nervous because I don’t know anybody here.”
In its first year, Milagro is being housed on the campus of the former Capshaw Middle School on West Zia Road. District officials plan to move it next fall to its
permanent home at a site that for decades served as De Vargas Middle School. Demolition of parts of the former De Vargas building on Llano Street is now underway in preparation for a $29 million construction and renovation project on the campus.
The Santa Fe school board and former Superintendent Joel Boyd decided in 2016 to create the new middle school by merging students at Capshaw and De Vargas
as the population at each campus declined. The proposal met fierce opposition, with parents and students at both schools saying the two populations, with distinct identities, could not be combined. Some said the two groups of students would never see themselves as one body and get along. Teachers expressed concern that they would lose their jobs or be forced to take a position at a different school.
That anxiety has since dissipated, Milagro Principal Marc Du Charme said Tuesday. The school held a barbecue Monday night to welcome students, parents and employees, he said, and the turnout was huge.
Several teachers agreed. “They ran out of hot dogs, and then hamburgers,” said Juan Bacigalupi, a native of Cuba whose varied background includes practicing medicine in the Dominican Republic and serving in the U.S. Army as an intelligence officer.
“The excitement is palpable,” Du Charme said as he hurried around the new school, checking in with teachers preparing their classrooms, workmen moving chairs and desks, and parents and students who wandered in with last-minute questions and paperwork.
“The kids are excited to be here,” the principal said.
His biggest concern, Du Charme said, “is that there are not enough hours in the day.”
The district phased in the school merger last year by allowing De Vargas eighth-graders to finish middle school there and sending seventh-graders from both middle school zones to Capshaw.
The former principal at De Vargas, Du Charme moved to Milagro when De Vargas shut down at the end of the spring semester. The new school has about 50 teachers, including 16 teachers from De Vargas and 21 from Capshaw, as well as 20 staff members.
In January, the school board voted to name the new school Milagro — the Spanish word for “miracle” — and students from both Capshaw and De Vargas came together to choose a school mascot (Thunder) and school colors (light blue and and light gold).
Jesus Ontivero, who is starting at Milagro this week as a seventh-grader, said the new name grabbed him.
“It’s a word you hear, and you think, ‘I want to go there,’ ” he said Tuesday, as he stood in the school lobby with family members. “You need a name that is trustworthy, like Milagro. I feel like this is going to be a new experience, and I’m open to new experiences.”
The district’s deputy superintendent, Linda Sink, stopped by Milagro midafternoon Tuesday. She had been visiting some of the schools that have concerns, such as Capital High School, which is still undergoing a renovation project, and sites where student enrollment was larger than expected.
About 13,000 students are enrolled in Santa Fe’s 30 public schools.
So far, Sink said, she had not encountered problems at any of them.
“But you never know,” she said. “There’s always the potential for something. It’s like a wedding. You get everything ready to go, and then something unexpected happens.”
Contact Robert Nott at 505-9863021 or rnott@sfnewmexican.com.