Charter School May Have To Close

Education may be on the chopping block for more than a hundred Las Cruces middle school students at La Academia Dolores Huerta.

Teachers are worried they may soon be without a job. Students are scared they may have to go to a different school. There is a sense of panic. Administrators said losing the school would also be a loss for the community.

“What you see here is different than you see over there,” David Lopez, a math teacher, said. “They’re not like this at all.”

Lopez explained to his eighth grade students how different high school is going to be, after they graduate next month.

“I believe they benefit from this school by the individual attention the kids get from teachers and administration,” Lopez said.

Nearly 120 sixth through eighth graders attend La Academia Dolores Huerta. The dual-language charter school opened in a leased building off Main Street in 2005. State law requires the school to own its campus by 2015, or it will have to shut down.

“It’s very scary, when you start thinking about not only the job I would lose, but what the kids receive when they come here,” Lopez said.

Rob del Plain, the school?s governing council president, said finding money is going to be a challenge.

“My biggest concern is that we’re just not able to come up with the funding, especially if the state continues to cut funding overall,” del Plain said.

Del Plain said he would like to buy and renovate the more than 50-year-old building, but they are not allowed to incur debt to do it.

“The economy goes down and the state does what they can,” del Plain said. “The state doesn’t necessarily just provide, here’s $1.2 million for you, go buy a school.”

Now, del Plain said it is a matter of raising the money.

“It would just be sad if it’s shut down because we all learn a lot here from our teachers and from each other,” Elizabeth Chavez, an 8th grader, said.

Parent Corrie Vallejos said kids should always come first.

“It’s just so sad the kids have to pay for it,? Vallejos said. “There’s other things we can cut; education is just one of those things you should never, ever cut.”

Worst-case scenario, ABC-7 asked if the school might not exist by the fall 2015 academic year.

“Well, yeah… 2015 if we’re not in a public building, then that could be a worst-case scenario,” del Plain said. “I don’t know what would happen at that point. Where do you go if the law says you need to be in a public building, and we don’t have a public building?”

To help conserve money, del Plain said, last resort is some staff may have to work part-time or be let go. But the school?s governing council is working closely with the New Mexico Coalition for Charter Schools and also trying to gain access to capital outlay funds from the state.