NMSA has outgrown the former Cathedral School.
A charter high school providing dance, music and other art education is still looking for a permanent home in Santa Fe. Finding the right places to move in or build something new, however, is proving to be a big challenge.
New Mexico School for the Arts has been using the former St. Francis Cathedral School building on Alameda since it opened four years ago, but has outgrown the classrooms there that were designed for elementary school kids.
Spaces for dance studios, music practice and performance halls and places to paint, sculpt and draw are just a few of the requirements for a team of volunteers who are serving on an ad hoc committee for a needed facility. Group chairman David Ater says the ideal spot would also enable the school to build housing for students from far-flung corners of the state and even those commuting daily now from Albuquerque.
"It's a long wish list," Ater tells SFR, noting that the school would like to be able to expand in phases. "The word is certainly out in the real estate market. We've looked at lots of stuff, but we do not have a deal."
Ater, who has a background in banking and real-estate development and serves as the treasurer for the New Mexico School for the Arts – Art Institute board of directors, says the goal is to find a home “sooner rather than later” and no later than the middle of next year.
So far though, efforts to snag the old St. Catherine Indian School have fallen flat and talks with the state Transportation Department this summer about using some of its land off Alta Vista Street also reached a dead end. Ater says school administrators and the board of directors for its nonprofit arm all want to keep the state charter school somewhere in “the body of the city of Santa Fe.”
Charter schools don't have it easy when it comes to securing permanent facilities, but perhaps NMSA can take heart from recent news out of the Academy for Technology and the Classics, which announced in late September that it 14 years after its founding, the school closed on the official purchase of a building constructed south of the city limits.
NMSA has 200 students enrolled this year, reports director Riis Gonzales, and about 21 live in residence halls through a lease agreement at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Retreat campus.
