New Art School Taking Shape ; Hiring a Head of School First Step, Then Come Teachers, Campus

By Polly Summar Journal Staff Writer

With New Mexico’s first-ever statewide residential charter school for the arts set to open in fall 2009, it still doesn’t have a head of school, teachers, a campus or students.

But Julia Barnes, planning year coordinator and a member of the founding committee, said the opening of the New Mexico School for the Arts is on schedule.

“We have gotten 35 to 40 applications for the head of school position,” Barnes said, “and I think we’re up to 50 inquiries about teaching positions — and we haven’t even posted those (jobs) yet.”

The school’s stated goal is to provide a place for students with a passion for the arts to move into a career in film, writing, music, visual arts, dance or theatre — and admission will be at least partly competitive.

Barnes emphasized that all decisions regarding the school have to be approved by the state Public Education Department and the Public Education Commission.

The head of school will be hired by the boards of both the school and the school’s fundraising arm, the New Mexico Art Institute, and will lead both bodies.

“The head of school will hire all the staff,” said Barnes, and then together will create the application for admission and decide on the student body. The head of school will also decide if the school will start with just a ninth-grade class, ninth and 10th grades, or ninth through 11th grades.

Barnes said the first set of interviews with head of school candidates was in August and the next will be in December. Once the head of school is hired, the rest of the process can start.

Barnes said the founding committee is still looking for a location for the school, “as many options as we can think of in the Santa Fe area.” One possibility is the old Cristo Rey Catholic school on Canyon Road. The old Manderfield Junior High is behind that building, which would also be a plus. “We would be interested in talking to the Santa Fe Public Schools about that and have looked at it once,” Barnes said.

“Cristo Rey is big enough for first-year students, but you can always use additional space for art studios and practice space,” said Barnes. “One of the things we’re looking at is for something that has a campus feel.”

Barnes said the school does not have money to buy a space.

The state charter stimulus fund set aside some $550,000 for start- up costs. The school is not eligible for federal money because of admissions criteria. The Thaw Charitable Trust and the Thornburg Foundation have pledged $1 million each, to be distributed over five years, to the school.

“What we got from the Legislature is the right to create the school, and the start-up money,” said Catherine Oppenheimer, a founding committee member who is married to Garrett Thornburg, also a founding committee member, of the Thornburg Foundation. “We can’t get any more money than a regular charter school and yet we (will) have students living in residence, an artistic segment providing three hours of instruction a day outside of school, a statewide outreach program and a summer program.

“All that money has to come from fundraising.”

Currently, admission to charter schools must be by lottery. But school supporters maintain that the School for the Arts must have admissions criteria — making getting into the school competitive.

Sen. Cynthia Nava, D-Las Cruces, lead sponsor of the bill that created the school, told the Journal in February, “We’re already used to that kind of competition, for things like advanced choir or the varsity football team.”

The school was approved in February by the state Legislature and exempted from admissions rules in the state charter school law. During its approval process, there was some controversy about the admissions process, with some saying it was essentially a private school funded with public money.

But J.D. Bullington, who is on the school’s founding committee and lobbied for the bill, said while the school may be something different for New Mexico, some 100 similar schools in 31 states, from Mississippi to New York to Arizona, have been very successful.

Bullington said the committee added language to the bill specifying equal access to students regardless of “exposure to artistic training and without regard to the student’s ability to pay residential costs.”

The bill that established the school states that an equal number of students will come from each of the state’s three congressional districts. Barnes said provisions for ethnicity are also in the bill.

“Our strong goal is to have the school reflect the state of New Mexico geographically, socio-economically, culturally … in as many ways as possible,” Barnes said.

The school’s board must submit an annual report to the charter schools division and the Public Education Commission about both applicants and students admitted to the school, “including the counties and the congressional districts represented by the students enrolled and the makeup of the student body in terms of socioeconomic status, gender and ethnicity,” according to the bill.

Attending the school is free, but there is a fee for residential living on a sliding scale. The school’s foundation would provide funds for students whose families couldn’t afford the residential costs.

“With the Legislative Education Committee, we studied the costs for residential facilities statewide — colleges and New Mexico Military Institute — and it goes from around $5,000 to $7,000,” said Barnes. “It’s all site specific. Until we know our location, we can’t pin down the exact costs.”

Oppenheimer said, “The or ig i na l concept ca me from parents from NDI (the National Dance Institute, of which Oppenheimer is co- founder) who were hoping not to have to commute from Espaola and have their kids at NDI 25 hours a week,” taking them back and forth between home, school in Espaola and dance in Santa Fe.

The three-year effort it took to launch the school resulted in better research and defining the school, Oppenheimer said. “We’ve visited a lot of these schools, we’ve seen them in action,” she said, “and we feel more confident than ever that New Mexico can do this.”

The job description for head of school says the person should be an inspirational leader, effective fundraiser, collaborate, entrepreneurial, a strong communicator, hold an advanced degree in an appropriate field and have experience or significant knowledge in New Mexico culture and its people, the arts, boarding and charter schools and governmental education agencies and legislative processes. The school is still taking applications.

See www.artschoolnm.org for more information and a link to the bill that created the school.

(c) 2008 Albuquerque Journal. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.