Public Education Commission members expressed concern about the former Waldorf school's plans for outreach at a July 10 meeting as well as in its approval for the charter application on August 15.
About a year after the private Santa Fe Waldorf School unexpectedly shut its doors due to low enrollment before the start of school last year, the Public Education Commission (PEC) has given Waldorf education a chance to re-open—this time as a tuition-free charter school.
The PEC—authorizer of all state charter schools in New Mexico—approved the application for the new iteration named the Sun Mountain Community School, in a 5-3 vote at its August 15 meeting.
Zoe Wilcox, who will serve as the Sun Mountain Community Schools interim head, tells SFR, “I feel so grateful for our potential students, and for the commissioners for granting a choice.”
The charter application, an effort led by co-applicants Wilcox and Jayita Sahni, along with Brianna Bassler and Jessica Wireman, was approved despite the Charter Schools Division recommending the PEC deny the application in an August 2 decision.
The CSD report states “the academic framework meets none of the criteria for an acceptable application” and that “in multiple places the application fails to align the Waldorf approach to a public school framework.” It also says the application “falls short” in its organizational and financial frameworks, “with numerous inconsistencies between the budget and the proposal narrative.”
None of the commissioners noted any concerns with the Sun Mountain Community School’s academic framework at the August 15 meeting, although they did briefly discuss the school’s plans for literacy education in a July community input hearing. The Sun Mountain Community School, like all Waldorf schools, would utilize the hands-on, outdoor learning and imagination-centered education philosophy of 19th-century philosopher and occultist Rudolf Steiner, adapted to fit the state education standards.
The application’s approval means that the Sun Mountain Community School will enter its “implementation year,” in which the school’s team must complete required steps set by the PEC before the school can open its doors in the following school year (in Sun Mountain Community School’s case, the 2025-26 school year).
During the implementation year, a newly-approved charter school must file at least three status updates with the PEC and the Public Education Department to demonstrate the school is progressing toward meeting their requirements, and the PEC hosts monthly training sessions with the school teams.
However, the PEC echoed a concern the CSD also noted in its recommendation for denial: reaching out to the wider Santa Fe community.
The CSD recommendation says that “the school is not in the best interest of the community,” noting that the majority of community members that spoke in favor of the school were family members of formerly enrolled students in the private Waldorf school.
“Although in response to the peer analysis the founders describe three outreach events, there is no evidence of support for the school from those events,” the CSD report says.
For this reason, District 10 commissioner Steven Carrillo proposed approving the application “on the condition that the school provide a plan for outreach and possible options for transportation in the first submission of the implementation year checklist.”
“The outreach shall be targeted outside of the previous Waldorf community and show adequate outreach to the full Santa Fe community, including possible partners and tribal communities to assist in outreach,” Carrillo specified. “A plan for adequate outreach and a plan for transportation shall be incorporated in the charter contract.”
In response to previously-aired concerns of the Sun Mountain Community School’s community outreach efforts, Wilcox said at the PEC meeting that the school team had an estimated 160 conversations with members of the wider Santa Fe community at outreach booths, and that 21 of the 100 people they spoke with at the Santa Fe Farmers Market signed up to receive more information about the school through email. At the meeting, 25 people signed up for public comment, and those who spoke showed support for the proposed school.
Although District 2 commissioner Timothy Beck would later vote in favor of the charter application, he said he felt the same concern as he did during the last PEC meeting that “everyone who came forward had a connection with the [former] Waldorf school.”
“What I wouldn’t want to see is the private Waldorf community become the public Waldorf community,” Beck said.
District 4 commissioner Rebekka Burt, who voted against the charter application after citing concerns with the community outreach, said she feels that the school team are “the right people in the right place at the wrong time.”
“I have confidence you can run a really great charter school here in Santa Fe,” Burt said to the school team, before adding, “I think the optics of me approving a charter that was very recently a failed private school is too great for me to be able to defend…my concern of the lottery filling up with people who already know about your school is too great to approve it this year. I genuinely would love to support this school next year and have that year of connecting with nonprofits in another part of town, connecting with people where they’re at.”
District 7 commissioner Patricia Gipson echoed Burt’s concerns, and added that the school obtaining a permanent head administrator and securing transportation for students—what she notes as key elements to developing a public charter school—currently depend on the school being approved for the state’s Charter Schools Program grant.
Carrillo said he disagreed with dissenting commissioners’ concerns that the school would be unable to meet community outreach needs within the implementation year, and said he feels the conditions of his motion are appropriate for addressing these concerns.
“I don’t want the Santa Fe public school community to miss this opportunity, and for another year of kids to miss that opportunity,” Carrillo said.
Burt, Gipson and District 3 commissioner Alana Brauer all voted against the charter application’s approval. Commissioners Melissa Armijo and Sharon Clahchischilliage were not present for the meeting.
Wilcox says she is excited to promote the school to families in the Waldorf community, find ways to increase the school’s diversity and to “get people to believe in Waldorf education who don’t know about it yet” during the upcoming implementation year.
“In our mission statement, we say we teach to the ‘whole child.’ From every community that makes up our broader community, it applies on every front. It applies to differences in learning styles, it applies to differences in backgrounds, socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds,” Wilcox says. “Everyone who signs up on that lottery will be blessed to have their name pulled and have their child seen as a whole human being.”
