Vista Grande is full speed ahead after district departure
New school charter includes plan to add middle school
Having separated from the Taos Municipal Schools District, Vista Grande High School has renewed its commitment to providing expeditionary and project-based learning to its diverse, 80-member student body, which, in the coming years, will expand to include 6th-, 7th- and 8th-graders.
Founded in 2007 as an expeditionary learning school — education that was exemplified by Outward Bound in the 1980s — Vista Grande has long been known as the school of second chances, a place where students who struggle elsewhere are offered new opportunities to succeed in a project-based learning environment. While keeping its original mission, the school is now set to add a middle school component, either on its current campus or at a second location, and is focused on enhancing its programs and recruiting more students.
Vista Grande Director Isabelle St. Onge said that by operating under the state’s authorization rather than Taos Municipal Schools, the school has removed a burdensome layer of administration, which also cost the charter school money, she said.
“One of the things that makes Vista Grande work is our small size,” St. Onge said. “As authorizer, Taos Municipal Schools took 2 percent off our general budget, and 5 percent from every grant that came through. All that [federal] CARES Act money, all that [federal] ARPA money? They kept 5 percent of what should have gone to Vista Grande for fiscal management, which we had to do on our end, too. For us, as small as we are, it added up pretty quickly.”
Interim Superintendent Valerie Trujillo said the Taos Municipal Schools District took a percentage off the top of all grant funding that flowed to Vista Grande, a rate she said is set each year by the state Public Education Department, but denied that the financial administration fees were out of the ordinary or onerous. “Absolutely not,” she said.
Under its fourth charter this year, Vista Grande has increased its participation in the Farms to Schools Program and now offers student meals made from 100 percent fresh, largely local ingredients. And the school’s agriculture education program has hit its stride, with students tending the school’s farm in partnership with the Taos Land Trust for as many as four days a week.
Ben Wright, land projects director at the Taos Land Trust, helps coordinate the student agriculture program onsite next to Fred Baca Park. He said the agriculture education offered at Vista Grande exemplifies the school’s mission in a nutshell.
“I have talked to educators who feel the classroom model is not working for this current generation of students, who feel more tactile forms of education are needed,” Wright said. “With the Vista Grande agriculture education program, students have a chance to come out and put their hands in the soil and touch plants and understand what they need. They’re learning skills that click in when its more hands-on. We’re co-creating a curriculum to bring their in-classroom needs here on the land to physically connect what they’re learning.”
Wright said it’s inaccurate to describe Vista Grande as the last stop for kids who flunk out of other schools.
“Like the Chrysalis Alternative School that went under, Vista Grande is offering an alternative for students who didn’t fit into the traditional education program,” he said. “You can look at it as the drop-out school, or the student rejects from normal schools, like in a negative way; or you can turn it around and say there’s something wrong with the traditional education system and these are the kids who see that and want something different.”
“And our junior and senior years are personalized,” and are able to attend UNM–Taos for credits,” St. Onge said. “We attract kids who are looking for project-based learning, small class sizes with extra tutoring and wraparound services. Our students are very bright.”
Vista Grande is also among the most diverse of Taos County schools.
“Our students reflect the diversity of Taos like no other school here,” said Brandy Corry, community school coordinator at Vista Grande, adding that, as of the start of the new school year, the student population is 44 percent hispanic, 38 percent Indigenous and 23 percent white. In addition to a high percentage of students who are members of Taos Pueblo, other federally-recognized tribes, or who identify as Genízaro, the school has a high concentration of Native American teachers and “a strong Indigenous curriculum,” according to St. Onge.
“Taos Pueblo has a permanent seat on our governing council,” St. Onge said.
Thanks to a memorandum of understanding with Taos Pueblo — an arrangement school officials said is unique in New Mexico — Vista Grande’s Native students spend days of traditional significance to the tribe on the Pueblo.
Non-Native students are also exposed to local tribal traditions and language, and the school “set our calendar by the traditional calendar of Taos Pueblo,” St. Onge said. “We didn’t want to penalize students for going to the Blue Lake ceremony.”