Silver school board has special meeting on the elementary schools 

By Lynn Janes

The Silver City Consolidated Schools held a special meeting March 9, 2026. Members in attendance included  Ashley Montenegro (phone for part of meeting), Patrick Cohn, Mike McMillan and Kimberly Klement. Superintendent William Hawkins also attended. Michelle Diaz did not attend.

This meeting was called to discuss the disposition of Sixth Street Elementary and Jose Barrios Elementary School buildings. 

Hawkins said no action would take place and the meeting would be to discuss where they stood with each facility. Hawkins wanted to recap the events of the facilities listed on the agenda. In 2024 the district adopted a facilities master plan and feasibility study in 2025. Both documents recommended the consolidation of two campuses and identified Sixth Street Elementary and Jose Barrios Elementary as not needed. This had been based on the size of the facilities and numbers of students. The elementary schools had not been utilizing 666 seats and that coupled with a continuing decline of students at approximately 2.4 percent a year. The facilities master plan aligned their facility needs with enrollment realities and the district had received approval from the Public Education Department to do the consolidation. The students in K through fifth grade will be moved to Harrison Schmidt Elementary and Stout Elementary. The students in sixth grade will be moved to La Plata Middle School. 

The conversation on what to do with the two vacated schools included selling, demolishing or donating peer to peer. Donation would have to be to a government public entity. Appraisals had been done on both schools and submitted in August 2025. The market value for Sixth Street Elementary came to $1.4 million and Jose Barrios Elementary came to $2 million. 

Hawkins said they had received notice from Western New Mexico University (WNMU) of their intent to purchase Sixth Street Elementary. Dr. Chris Maples, interim president, spoke further on the purchase. 

Maples said the board had authorized him to move forward investigating and starting the process to purchase the school. They have a new appraisal because the other one had been done for the seller. The appraisal will be for the buyer because it had additional information that will be required by the state and Maples said he would have that later in the month. 

The university had received a lot of support including the board, lieutenant governor and higher education department. 

The university would like to move the entire early childhood education center to the school. Sixth Street Elementary has enough room for them to put everything together. The board of regents would be having a meeting March 17, 2026, to speak more in depth in closed session and he would then have more information after that. Maples hoped they could have everything closed and be able to start renovations in the summer.

Maples said by them purchasing and renovating the facility it would be half the cost of building a brand-new facility and have twice the space. 

The next item for them to discuss would be Jose Barrios Elementary. Early in the year the district had received a letter of interest from Aldo Leopold Charter School for the purchase of the facility. In the past week they had received a proposal from Aldo Leopold Charter School. They will be utilizing the New Mexico Finance Authority (NMFA) for the loan and currently are in that process. Last week the NMFA had come down to do a walkthrough of Jose Barrios, went up on the roof and walked the property. Hawkins had heard positive feedback on the property and viability of the loan and thought by the end of the month they might know if the loan would be approved. He did not announce the purchase offer but wanted to wait until they moved further in the process. 

Hawkins said they intended to keep the Jose Barrios name, but he didn’t know how that would be done. 

Klement asked what the timeline would be if Aldo Leopold Charter School had a green light on the NMFA loan . Hawkins said he thought it would be a 90-day process which would make it close in June or July. Hawkins added the plan Z would be demolition of the facilities. but hoped that would not have to happen. 

Hawkins cautioned they still had some hoops to go through and are definitely not in the final conversation. They must have district approval of the purchase agreements, finance authority approval and possible PSFA (public school finance authority) review. They must make sure they will be compliant with public property disposition statues. 

McMillan asked Maples if they had any conversations about naming the Sixth Street Elementary School. Maples said no, but added Sixth Street was generic enough that nobody should be upset if the name went away.

Cohn thanked both entities for their interest in the facilities and everyone for their hard work moving the process forward. 

Montenegro said the school district had been blessed to have these opportunities and not have to have the conversations of demolition. "The community is so emotionally tied to these buildings, and it has been part of our lives.” 

 Adjourned