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Morning Word
Santa Fe students head back to school
Fall officially starts Sept. 23, but for Santa Fe students today marks the unofficial end of summer as they return to the classroom. According to figures provided to SFR by Santa Fe Public Schools, more than 11,000 students and over 800 teachers start the 2023-2024 school year today. The district has a few remaining vacancies, Public Information Officer Cody Dynarski says: approximately 30 teacher vacancies, along with a few bus drivers, educational assistants and nursing positions. The district has four “social emotional learning days” on the calendar, which Superintendent Hilario “Larry” Chavez described last spring as part of the district’s “priority focus on student safety and well-being.” Dynarski also highlighted the district’s full implementation of Standards Based Learning this year. “The most important item,” Dynarski writes, “would be to have your student attend school each and every day. If they are not in school, they are not learning. Student attendance makes a difference in their academic outcome.”
The start of school also means the resumption of school traffic. Santa Fe Police Deputy Chief Matthew Champlin in SFPD’s Operations Division tells SFR via email SFPD will be deploying speed/message trailers to large intersections today reminding the public that school zones are in effect. “Officers will also be rotating through the school zones to enforce speeding and other observed traffic violations,” he writes, and public safety aides also will be in school zones with emergency lights activated to remind the motoring public in the area to slow down and pay attention. “The Santa Fe Police Department would strongly encourage motorists to drive safe, pay attention to speed limits and stay off their phones. The safety of the roadways while children return to school is everyone’s responsibility,” Champlin writes. That message dovetails with one provided to SFR by Superintendent Chavez about the start of the school year: “As one community we can provide students the opportunity to be successful in the educational journey, we are all in this together,” Chavez says. “We are one! Be part of the solution.”
Nearly $2 mil awarded for NM natural disaster legal services
New Mexico Legal Aid has been awarded approximately $1.9 million by the national Legal Services Corporation to help low-income New Mexicans impacted by last year’s wildfires. LSC, which announced the award yesterday, said NMLA is one of 14 organizations receiving the funding made available via $20 million of supplemental funding in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023, passed by Congress to support this widespread natural disaster response. In a statement provided to SFR by NMLA Executive Director and attorney Sonya G. Bellafant, she said the courts had alerted NMLA to the “unmet need in the northern region resulting from the devastating fires. This LSC Disaster grant will allow us to mobilize attorneys to advocate, educate and represent those impacted by the fires in a meaningful way. Providing a benefit to the impacted communities directly and holistically will help streamline access to other local organizations and resources. As a result of this grant, New Mexico Legal Aid will be able to bring resources directly to the population in immediate need of legal assistance.” Last week, the Federal Emergency Management Agency reported the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Claims Office has paid out more than $14 million to claimants thus far. In a statement regarding yesterday’s NMLA award, US Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-NM, noted that “in the midst of recovering from last year’s devastating wildfire season and its aftermath, the last thing New Mexico families need are legal headaches. This funding to the New Mexico Legal Aid will provide welcome and needed free legal assistance to families as they continue to rebuild. I will also continue pushing to make sure those recovering from the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire receive the full benefit of the federal support our delegation fought to secure—and urge New Mexicans to continue working with the FEMA Claims Office early and often.”
Supreme Court clarifies police power during traffic stops
The state Supreme Court yesterday issued an opinion that provides guidance regarding law enforcement authority during traffic stops by affirming police have a right to ask for passengers’ identifying information—such as name and date of birth—under the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution and Article II, Section 10 of the New Mexico Constitution. The opinion stemmed from a case in which Clovis Police Officer Brice Stacy stopped and detained the vehicle in which defendant Hugo Vasquez-Salas was riding because it had a broken rear license-plate light. As he approached, Stacy saw a partially open backpack in the back seat with bolt cutters, protective eyeglasses, two pairs of gloves and a face mask the ruling says was later clarified at trial to be a “camouflage face mask that goes over the entire head, just leaving an opening for the face” sticking out of the backpack. Vasquez-Salas was subsequently arrested and convicted by a jury for possession of burglary tools. In his appeal, Vasquez-Salas said evidence from the traffic stop should have been suppressed at trial. The court unanimously ruled Stacy had “reasonable suspicion” of criminal activity to ask about the identity of a front seat passenger due to a variety of circumstances, including driver’s nervous behavior and “confusion about his own age,” as well as Vasquez-Salas untruthful response on that matter.
Taking care of bilingual business
SFR takes a close look at new initiatives from the City of Santa Fe Economic Development Department and the Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce that aim to increase outreach and resources for Spanish-speaking businesses and entrepreneurs. Those initiatives include the Chamber’s new telenovela Entre El Negocio y El Amor (“Between Business and Love”); the annual Feria Southside festival that debuted last year; and bimonthly smaller mercados highlighting bilingual businesses. Recent statistics show the efforts are well placed. The American Immigration Council estimates approximately 1,800 immigrant entrepreneurs generated over $35 million in business income for Santa Fe in 2019. While making up only 11% of the population, immigrants made up 15.2% of business owners in the county in the same year. Hispanic entrepreneurs made up around 66% of the total number of immigrant business owners within the city. Chamber President Bridget Dixon says more Spanish-first initiative ideas are in the works, such as an entrepreneurial educational program specifically designed for Spanish-speaking and immigrant business owners. At the city, Economic Development and Communications Administrator Liz Camacho says that office is drafting an economic development plan for Santa Fe’s immigrant populations.
Listen up
While still on strike in her acting career, Jamie Lee Curtis continues to work in other realms, including as the co-author of the recently published graphic novel Mother Nature, written with Russell Goldman and illustrated by Karl Stevens. The story is set in New Mexico where Nova Terrell has grown up to hate the giant oil company on which her town is reliant after watching her engineer father die as a result of one of its experiments. Nova and her mother are Diné, and several Native Americans consulted on the graphic novel. Curtis and others spoke about the book, which was inspired by the climate crisis, on a recent episode of NPR’s All Things Considered.
Inspired by design
The most recent installation of Business of Home’s 50 States Project, “a series of candid conversations with interior designers across the country about how they’ve built their businesses,” profiles Santa Fe designer Lisa Samuel of Samuel Design Group about her journey to her career, and its influences. Growing up in a large family in Santa Fe, Samuel says, she had never heard of interior design and did not have many resources outside of public school, “but I learned about architecture from encyclopedias and dictionaries, where I used to look at a lot of pictures, and I knew I loved it.” The city itself also served as inspiration, she notes, and “one day [walking] in downtown Santa Fe, I happened to notice this little interior design studio, and that was fascinating to me. I thought, ‘I’ve got to look into that more.’” Samuel, who describes her childhood as “sad and lonely,” had her first child at age 17 and her second at 19. Determined not to stagnate, she set out for California with her children, $900 and a small suitcase. The interview details Samuel’s inspiring perseverance that eventually lead to her now-successful business, which she has run for more than 25 years. She also discusses the evolution of her aesthetic, as influenced by Le Corbusier: “I think that in the beginning, Santa Fe style was simple. But over the years, it got very kitschy and overdone,” she tells Business of Home. “I don’t like that because you need to rest in a space. If your eye is going crazy all the time, you can’t rest. A simple, sophisticated and inviting space is always much more nourishing than something that’s too fussy. And because I grew up here, I recognize when it is overdone.”
A New Yorker in Santa Fe
New Yorker magazine music critic Alex Ross visits Santa Fe to attend this season’s Santa Fe Opera, but devotes a fair portion of his review to discussing the opera house itself, which he characterizes as “one of the most spectacular instances of indoor-outdoor architecture.” He continues: “In an acoustical mystery that invites comparison with the beautiful anomalies of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, voices project handsomely in the auditorium without getting lost in the wind. Bewitching serendipities are routine.” Moreover, he notes, one can purchase an affordable subscription to all five operas per season. And again: “The time-slowing beauty of the setting is an extravagant bonus. Few would dissent from the verdict of the late opera maven Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who said that there is no lovelier place to hear opera in the summer.” As for the Santa Fe Opera’s 66th season (which ends on Aug. 26), Ross only saw three of the season’s five offerings: Monteverdi’s Orfeo, Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande and Wagner’s Flying Dutchman. Like most critics whose reviews we’ve mentioned in this newsletter, he had mostly mainly positive observations regarding Orfeo and little patience for the other two: “Both stagings tend toward grungy industrial imagery—churning wall fans are a shared element—and both make a somewhat head-scratching impression,” Ross writes, noting those productions were “more newsworthy for showing the progress of young singers on the rise.”
Rain check!
The National Weather Service forecasts a 50% chance for precipitation today, with scattered showers and thunderstorms after noon. Otherwise, look for increasing clouds, with a high temperature near 77 degrees and east wind 5 to 10 mph becoming west in the morning.
Thanks for reading! The Word will be taking a teensy end-of-summer break starting tomorrow and will return Monday, Aug. 21. First, she plans to read the new indictment (possibly the New York Times’ annotated version). Then she plans to go see Bear Grease at the Santa Fe Playhouse.
