Santa Fe students still on “pandemic rollercoaster”
While Santa Fe Public Schools students’ 82% four-year high school graduation rate remains in line with the statewide graduation rate, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect students, SFPS Superintendent Hilario “Larry” Chavez says. “Since the start of the pandemic in 2020, students have been on a roller coaster, which shows in SFPS’ graduation rates, Chavez says in a statement issued prior to last night’s SFPS Board of Education meeting, at which the new figures released by the Public Education Department were discussed. “Our hope and expectation are that rates will improve when the PED reports the 2022-23 graduation rates, given the district’s innovative use of federal pandemic funding, particularly from dollars received in December 2020, to close learning gaps.” PED also released graduation rates for specific high schools: 83% at Capital High School, for the 2021-2022 school year, in line with the prior year; 80% at Santa Fe High School, a drop from 84% the year before; 84% at Mandela International Magnet School, compared with a graduation rate of more than 95% the year before, with a note from the district that “the fluctuation in graduation rates is due to small graduating class sizes”; and 75% at Early College Opportunities High School, an improvement from 67% the year prior. Data from Desert Sage Academy was “masked by PED,” SFPS says.
Controlled burn work scheduled in Santa Fe National Forest
Hikers in the Santa Fe National Forest may encounter crews with chainsaws throughout the month as the first stage of the Santa Fe Mountains Landscape Resiliency Project commences, with crews “thinning key ridgelines that have been identified for priority treatment, reducing hazardous fuels within Big Tesuque,” a news release says. According to the Forest Service, crews will be cutting small diameter (less than 9″) conifers and piling the material along Forest Road 102, causing impacts on the Big Tesuque, Winsor, Borrego and Bear Wallow Trails on an intermittent basis through Oct. 31. The Forest Service will hold a community meeting at 2 pm today regarding the North Aztec Springs prescribed fire at the Office of Emergency Management, Emergency Operations Center (1600 St. Michael’s Drive). The North Aztec Springs prescribed fire is approximately 650 acres located at the northwest corner of the Santa Fe Municipal Watershed adjacent to the communities of Hyde Park Estates, Paseo Segundo, High Summit, Los Cerros Colorados, Cerro Gordo and Upper Canyon. As described in a news release, the burning area constitutes “the last ‘first entry’ broadcast burn within the Santa Fe Municipal Watershed project, following 20 plus years of successful thinning treatments, and prescribed fires implemented by the SFNF and partners.” Today’s community meeting comes at the request of several community groups, SFNF officials say, and follows a prior meeting last month. “It is our goal to share information with as many of the neighboring communities as we can.” District Ranger Sandra Imler-Jacquez says in a statement. “The Santa Fe National Forest/Espanola Ranger District aim to be transparent and informative about our plans.” Operations will begin at the earliest on Oct. 16 with no ignitions on Oct. 22 to reduce air quality impacts to the Albuquerque Marathon.
SFPS board backs housing tax
The Santa Fe Public Schools Board of Education yesterday adopted a resolution declaring its support for a proposed high-end home excise tax on local election ballot Nov. 7. The resolution “reiterates” the board’s “position that affordable housing for educators is a crisis that is placing high-quality learning in Santa Fe in jeopardy” and “calls for additional funding and aggressive action from local, state and federal government to provide funding and partner with communities to address this crisis in educator housing.” Board Member Kate Noble, who sponsored the measure, credited the Santa Fe chapter of the National Education Association for “bringing to attention the interconnected nature of these issues.” She noted that NEA-SF identified a “missing middle” group of educators who earn enough money to not qualify for affordable housing programs, but not enough to keep up with soaring housing costs. “This community, as we know, desperately needs educators. We need our teachers, we need our staff, we need people who work in this district to be able to live here,” Noble said. The resolution reference’s NEA-Santa Fe’s August 2021 survey of more than 400 educators on topics including affordable housing, which reported 86% of local educators could not buy a home that met their family’s needs; 64% experienced rent increases causing financial hardships in the last five years; and 52.9% were concerned about their ability to continue working in Santa Fe due to rising costs.
City seeks housing feedback
The City of Santa Fe’s Office of Affordable Housing announced yesterday it is applying for a $4 million federal grant—the Pathways to Removing Obstacles to Housing grant from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development—and is seeking public input on its application through Tuesday, Oct. 24. If successful, city officials say they will use the funds to “partially implement the city’s newly revised land development code and support anti-displacement policy work, as well as pay for necessary infrastructure and pre-development costs for the first affordable housing parcel at Midtown.” Read the application here and submit feedback here. Also on the city housing front, the Planning and Land Use Department’s Planning Division this week launched a “residential pipeline map” officials say residents can consult to track “small to large-scale residential development projects and construction” at four stages: under review, approved, under construction, and completed. “The future of Santa Fe and our community depends on housing for the people who live and work here,” Mayor Alan Webber said in a statement. “This map is an incredible tool for Santa Feans to visualize our progress toward addressing the critical need for housing in the city. I encourage everyone to follow along as we move forward with these essential projects.”
Listen up
Though we try to keep the listening recs local, we’re going to split the difference heading into the weekend. Jump into Welcome to Night Vale at any spot, or start at the very beginning of the podcast founded in 2012 that the LA Times aptly describes as a “massively popular storytelling vehicle chronicling a fictional, dystopian, desert town ‘where every conspiracy theory is true.’” Get a taste or kick off a listening binge because Welcome to Night Vale’s live show, “The Attic,” comes to the Lensic Performing Arts Center at 7 pm, Tuesday, Oct 17 and is one of SFR’s picks of the week.
Let there be (less) light
The annular “ring of fire” solar eclipse will be visible in New Mexico tomorrow—starting at about 9:15 am, with maximum annularity around 10:30 am (both NASA and the New York Times have handy solar eclipse maps). The Santa Fe Public Library Southside will host a solar eclipse viewing party from 10 am to noon. According to the state Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department, 16 of New Mexico’s 35 State Park will be in the path of annularity, with solar eclipse glasses available at participating parks on a first-come, first-serve basis (scroll to the map at the bottom of the page and expand each park to see the eclipse schedule). Several national monuments in the state also will host viewing events, including El Malpais in Grants; the Petroglyph National Monument in Albuquerque; and “Eclipse in the Heart”—an event including eclipse demonstrations—at Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument in Mountainair. Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta also will be a prime spot to view the eclipse. If you make it to Albuquerque, the New Mexico Museum of Natural History will be hosting eclipse day activities from 9 am to 2 pm, including multiple solar telescopes outside on the museum grounds, and live feeds from NASA and NOAA broadcast on monitors throughout the museum. At the Valles Caldera National Preserve in Jemez Springs, attendees during the eclipse, which falls during the preserve’s fall fiesta, can participate in the NASA citizen science project, Eclipse Soundscapes, by making observations about how animals are affected by the eclipse. Tribal parks on the Navajo Nation, however, will be closed to the public during the eclipse, following notice last month from the Navajo Nation Parks and Recreation, which announced the closure for “observance of the Eclipse…in regards to cultural beliefs.” The New York Times explores some of those beliefs through interviews with several Indigenous experts, such as David Begay (Diné) a cultural astronomer and vice president of the Indigenous Education Institute.
There’s no place like a $24 million home
Check our math, but it appears should Santa Fe’s proposed so-called “mansion tax” be in place when a possibly record-setting home sells, it would raise close to $700,000 for the Santa Fe Affordable Housing Trust Fund. The 3% excise tax—appearing as a ballot question in the Nov. 7 city election—would apply to homes sold for more than $1 million and apply only to the cost of the home after the first million, which in this case would mean the remaining $22.65 million. The home in the Camino del Monte Sol neighborhood, as reported by the Wall Street Journal in a recent installment of its “luxury homes” series, “was the longtime home of the late financier Eddie Gilbert, sometimes called the Boy Wonder of Wall Street, who served two prison sentences in connection with white-collar crimes.” Gilbert bought the house around 1988 with his wife, Gail “Peaches” Gilbert and the couple spent approximately $14 million renovating, as one does. Eddie Gilbert died here in 2015 at the age of 92. Agent Todd Davis of Compass says the listing could set a residential record in Santa Fe, surpassing a 2008 $17.4 million sale. “The property was once the site of parties for influential local artists,” the story notes, as its original owner was Alice Clark Myers and her husband, American Western landscape painter Datus Myers, who moved to New Mexico in the 1920 and whose “notable neighbors” included The Land of Little Rain author Mary Hunter Austin, and members of the “Los Cinco Pintores” group of painters that included Fremont Ellis and Will Shuster. The main house has eight bedrooms; Gail Gilbert keeps two donkeys and about 45 chickens on the property.
Here comes the sun (and the moon)
The National Weather Service forecasts a clear, sunny day, albeit brisk with a high temperature near 64 degrees, northwest wind 5 to 10 mph becoming southwest in the afternoon, and a freeze warning tonight. Look for temps in the high 60s and low 70s throughout the weekend, along with sunny skies (except for Saturday morning during the annular eclipse, during which do not look at the sky without eclipse glasses).
Thanks for reading! The Word has Sufjan Stevens’ heartbreaking new album Javelin playing on repeat.