Charter School Will Offer Film Training; Automotive And Trades Classes Cut

By ANDREA SCHOELLKOPF Journal Staff Writer

An Albuquerque charter school will begin training its students for the film industry this year, cutting its ties to the automotive and construction trades it started out with.

Digital Arts and Technology Academy — formerly known as Albuquerque Charter Vocational — received a charter renewal this week from the Albuquerque school board. It will continue to offer classes at its original campus at 1011 Lamberton NE, immediately northwest of the Big I, but has closed its trades complex on nearby Candelaria NE.

Enrollment for the 2007-08 school year will begin July 9, with returning students getting first shot at the new program.

The classes aren’t for actors or producers — but for behindthe scenes crews and technical support.

"The jobs are there," student services director Leslie Kelly said. "Locally, they’re not being filled."

The school is working with Central New Mexico Community College to ensure its courses meet industry standards. Its film students will be participating in a film industry "boot camp" this summer. The camp will waive an introductory course expense as well as give students a chance to participate in the Duke City Shootout film competition.

Still, the central core of the school will be the same, officials said, but it is adapting to job needs in New Mexico.

"Film studios are going up in Mesa del Sol and Rio Rancho," Evalynne Hunemuller, the school’s chief operating officer, recently told members of the APS board’s policy committee. "It’s one of our governor’s priorities. We felt like we wanted to take advantage of that."

The school’s former trades center off Candelaria NW has been secured by CNM, and an auction of the automotive equipment is planned for later this summer.

School officials said they didn’t want to lose the building or its programs, but there were comparatively fewer students in the trades program compared with the other courses still being offered at its campus on Lamberton, among them: 3D computer art, animation, architectural CAD, digital photography, graphic design, mechanical CAD, Microsoft Office, networking, PC repair and Photoshop.

The state had suspended the governing authority of the school — which at the time were separate charters that have since merged — in 2006 after allegations that its former superintendent improperly paid public money to himself and several school employees and that enrollment numbers were inflated. As part of a settlement, the state Secretary of Education appointed a chief operating officer to have authority over operations and personnel until June 30.

The school opened to 300 students in 2002 and had been featured in a 2005 Reader’s Digest article as a place that "could transform America’s classrooms" by getting hard-toreach students involved in learning.

The charter offered core academic and vocational classes such as consumer math, with hard trades taught at the separate center off Candelaria NW in areas such as homebuilding. At one point, enrollment was listed as 650 for the combined schools.

School officials said many students expected the school to be a "mini-CNM," where graduates would also hold certification for industry jobs.

"It wasn’t happening," said principal Lisa Myhre, the former Albuquerque Academy dean of students who became the school’s principal last year.

"It was really a crime to continue down that pathway. It would’ve been unethical for us to continue."

The school expects a drop in enrollment at first — it was at 330 students last year — until word gets out about the new program.

On top of that, the school is ridding itself of the NovaNet Internet-based remedial learning program that the state Public Education Department also had told the school to eliminate from its curriculum this year.

Students, Kelly said, weren’t learning.

Last semester, the school began offering classroom instruction in English and mathematics — the two subjects featured on the state standardized tests.

The changes also will include an eight-period schedule, as opposed to the previous three, 21/2-hour blocks.

Officials say it was a hard change to make for a school that attracts alternative students, and the instruction had 80 students working in a computer lab overseen by 10 teachers.

"What our kids were missing — they lacked the ability to formulate questions or engage in discourse," Myhre said.

(c) 2007 Albuquerque Journal. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.