• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

New South Valley Charter High School Plans to Hit the Ground Running

Posted on: Tuesday, 16 August 2005, 18:00 CDT

An empty room greeted teachers at Horizon Academy Prep High School on Monday -- the day school was supposed to start for ninth- and 10thgraders.

But instead of seeing empty space -- save for a box of ceiling tiles and a lone spider inching to the floor -- the teachers chose to imagine all the work space they would have once classes began.

"I think we'll just be fine with what they've got," said social studies teacher David Hughes, one of the faculty's four teachers who came to the high school from the three other Horizon charters. Eleven other teachers are new.

Pending a certification for occupancy by the building inspector, the school -- with its promise of academic rigor and a technology and arts focus --can open to its 401 expected students Wednesday in the renovated main building of a South Valley strip mall.

The existing Horizon Academy elementary already is open in classrooms in the mall.

A new classroom building, still under construction, is not scheduled to open until Sept. 5.

The delayed opening will push the high school's last day from May 27 to the first week of June.

Construction of the school was delayed for three weeks this spring after the developer, Rick Saylor, learned that state and city school officials had raised concerns about management problems at Horizon Academy, which has had three charter elementary and middle schools until this year.

This year, the state ordered Horizon schools to sever ties with their founder, Barry Browning, and management company, Advanced Educational Programs, because it had been operating as a "mini- district," rather than as four distinct, independent charters.

Charters are public schools run independently of school districts, although the local boards of education have the authority to grant or revoke their charters.

The state law requiring a lottery for admission meant students who had attended one of Horizon's three elementary/middle schools didn't have automatic entry into the high school. In fact, only 60 percent of the students come from Horizon, with most of the student body hailing from the South Valley.

The first Horizon

Horizon first opened as a kindergarten-through eighth-grade school three years ago in a strip mall along Isleta south of Rio Bravo. Saylor, the landlord, moved the school into the former Planet Fun site, a children's amusement center that also operates next to the Horizon North Valley campus. Since then, two other schools opened -- on the West Side and North Valley -- in campuses built entirely by Saylor.

This year, Horizon's high school was added to the remaining strip mall area at the South Valley campus. New walls and a chain-link fence divide the two schools, giving the elementary students their own playground space and the high school access to the gym.

Saylor said Friday his crews have been working until 2 a.m. over the past two weeks to complete the new $2.56 million high school addition, which renovated the southern part of the former strip mall into classroom space. The northern part is the elementary.

"I didn't think we were going to be able to get it done till the first of (September)," Saylor said, who is delighted with the newest project.

Construction of the 8,400-square-foot, eightclassroom building won't be done until after Labor Day. A track will be built later this year and eight more classrooms will be added over the next two years.

Art and drama -- part of the high school's emphasis -- will be some of the few electives offered this year until the enrollment expands.

With extracurricular activities "encouraged," basketball will likely be the first team sport, beginning with the winter season.

Until the new high school classroom wing opens in September, teachers will share classrooms in the renovated part of the building and students will alternate attending school on days under an A-B schedule.

Hughes will be sharing Classroom No. 9 with Jan Cobb, a math teacher from Minnesota, who will teach the ninth- and 10th-graders math on the days Hughes isn't teaching social studies to seventh- graders. The room used to be part of a church in the South Valley mall.

"I hope those prayers are going to stay here," Cobb said.

Localized control

Hughes said he's looking forward to the school's independence from management companies and ties to the other Horizon charters.

"This year we're seeing a huge change because it's localized," he said.

Last year, his classroom lacked books and other instructional materials because the funding was being used to pay other bills.

Monday, principal John Harris' temporary office was piled with textbooks waiting for students.

Still, remnants of the financial troubles continue to plague the schools, which can begin the school year fully funded from the state but are unsure how to pay some $318,000 owed to creditors last year and $50,000 in federal stimulus funds missing from the high school.

According to an Aug. 4 letter written by Bill French, head of Horizon's former management company, a deposit of $50,000 was incorrectly made to the high school instead of to the Friends of Horizon account, which handles the lease agreements. French said the bank -- when asked to correct the deposit -- instead moved $100,000 from the high school account. By the time the management company realized the error, the funds already had been used to pay other bills.

"The account balance of Friends of Horizon had not had sufficient funds to replenish the $50,000 since the discovery of the error," French wrote in the letter to Harris.

He maintains the funds aren't missing and that his organization was unsuccessful in securing a loan for the Friends of Horizon to pay back the high school.

Harris, who is now in charge of the school's budget, only knows that funds aren't there that would have helped purchase startup equipment and some contracted services.

"My books (from the last fiscal year) aren't closed yet," he said.

Saylor -- who owns all four of the campuses and who is owed $165,000 from Friends of Horizon in rent -- said he is waiting to see what came out of audits. He said he believed there was no ill intent on the part of the school's founders because they were having to use funds to pay other bills.

Had it not been for Saylor, Harris said, the school would not be able to open.

"It's been a tough birth," Harris said. "Parents have held in with belief in us."

'Dropped in my lap'

The school, Harris said, was essentially "dropped in my lap" in June with the withdrawal of AEP as the Horizon management company. Now, he answers to a four-member board, including two parents and two community members affiliated with New Mexico universities.

Harris came on two years ago as an adviser to begin the high school at the request of former Horizon executive director Stephen Wesley.

"I owed him a favor," said Harris, who had been contemplating a career change after 30 years in education.

A psychology and sociology major, he had been laid off from a job in business in the 1970s when he was asked to come back to his old Catholic high school and teach social studies.

"It was a calling," said Harris, who was raised in Chicago's South Side. "... I found out I was pretty good at it. I found kids that needed what I had to offer for them to move out of situations."

At the time, those students were being pushed to break out of the noncollegiate mold and succeed academically. Several ex-students, he said, later went to the military service academies and Northwestern University.

He became a principal four years after he started teaching, and has since run schools in Chicago and South Bend, Ind., and opened the private Cardinal Ritter High School in East St. Louis.

About 90 percent of Horizon Academy Prep bears his stamp, he said, primarily "academic rigor."

"I know that's a term thrown around," Harris said.

But students at Horizon, he promised, will likely know on their first day just how serious the school is.

"Their first exposure's going to be very shocking," Harris said.

He said the school wants to exceed the state's standards -- such as a minimum of 70 percent for passing instead of 60 percent. The percentages, he said, will replace the traditional letter grades and grade point averages.

While the Midwesterner loves his new home of the past two years, the state's educational standing is among the worst in the country.

"This state is dead last in education," he said.

Source: Albuquerque Journal

More News in this Category