APS amending 'right-sizing' plan after parents speak out

Officials with the Albuquerque Public Schools are amending a plan that would include closing Taft Middle School and transferring those students to Taylor Middle School beginning next school year following an outcry earlier this week from parents who urged the Board of Education to delay an upcoming vote on the changes.

Board President Danielle Gonzales told the Journal on Thursday that APS brass are crafting the amended plan, but it has not been made public to the board. She also said the board would not delay the vote scheduled for Dec. 18 because the plan involves attendance boundaries, which must be approved soon because families need to know what schools their children are zoned for ahead of registration in January.

“If we keep pushing this down the line, then we won’t be able to tell families where to enroll their student, and that’s not fair to families across the district and the North Valley,” Gonzales said.

She said other aspects of the plan don’t need to be implemented as soon, but they’re still a priority for the board.

APS spokesperson Phill Casaus could not say when the amended plan would be released.

The proposed boundaries, significantly enlarged to include Taft and Taylor students, were developed under APS’ so-called “right-sizing methodology” found on the district’s website. Since 2016, a committee of APS officials has used a matrix to determine the viability of its schools and whether they need more support, should be repurposed or consolidated. Those decisions come as APS that has gone from close to 89,100 students in the 2012-13 school year to about 71,100 students during the 2022-23 school year, according an announcement from APS in January 2023 to detail repurposing several schools.

The boundaries were only part of the most recent publicly available right-sizing plan, dated Dec. 4.

Other changes in that plan included moving sixth- and seventh-grade Taft students to Taylor beginning next school year. Taylor is expected to get a new $28.9 million classroom facility in the next two and a half years.

That same school year, Coronado Dual Language Magnet Elementary School, currently serving grades K-5, would move to the current Taft location and become a K-6 dual language magnet school, the plan said. Eventually, it would house K-8 students. Coronado’s reputation has made it “one of the most sought-after schools in the district (and) state,” and moving into Taft will allow the school to admit a larger cohort of students, the plan said.

Alvarado Elementary School, a school that feeds into Taft Middle School, was not included in the plan. But that did not stop a group of parents, including teachers, from mobilizing at Wednesday’s board meeting to try to convince the board to delay the Dec. 18 vote.

The group included Amy Ziegler, an Alvarado parent and president of the school’s Parent Teacher Association. At a recent PTA-sponsored event, she heard parents complain they felt the need to “shop for a new middle school.” Ziegler proposed to the board the creation of one dual language middle school without the lottery system, which Coronado has.

Another complaint by Alvarado parents to the board was what they perceived as a lack of transparency about the plan and outreach to them by the district, which did not come until the eve of Wednesday’s meeting.

In an interview, Gonzales admitted that while there was “comprehensive outreach” by APS to parents, the initiative did not include contacting Alvarado families.

“That was a missed opportunity,” Gonzales said. “There’s always communication that can be improved.”

Despite some parents’ gripes about a lack of transparency or outreach, APS has communicated with its constituents about the current right-sizing plan, most notably through letters the Taft and Taylor middle school principals released to parents last month, which were provided to the Journal. In March 2023, the district issued a statement on its website floating the notion of moving Taft students to Taylor, with board approval.

But some Alvarado parents, who said they recently met with administrators and members of the board, wondered if board members feel they are in charge of APS or if district officials are dictating to the board.

“As elected officials, you are our voice,” Emily Jaramillo, an APS parent, said at the Wednesday school board meeting.

Ziegler said following the meeting that the fact that APS is working on amending the plan based on public input is not assuring to her.

“The way they went about this in the first place, I believe that it will continue to be in a sneaky, closed-door-meeting manner,” Ziegler said.

She urged the district to release the new plan prior to the next board meeting for the community to have a voice on the matter.