An early concept of how the new middle school building would be configured.
Courtesy SCSD

Construction of a brand new school building in New Mexico is slow going, but Socorro Consolidated School District Superintendent Ron Hendrix says everything’s right on track for the new middle school building.

He said the Educational Specifics portion have been wrapped up by the state.

“The process is, they do an overview of what’s needed that you have to present to the PSFA (Public School Facilities Authority) with the application,” Hendrix said. “So the ‘Ed Spec’ people had come in and talked to our middle school teachers to help design what an educational plan would look like with the new middle school. This includes things like all the classrooms we will need as well as where it’s going to sit on campus. That sort of thing.

“They’ve got some preliminary designs,” he said. “They gave us a one-story version and a two-story version.”

From here, the design stage will take anywhere from nine to 12 months.

“All we have now is permission from the Public School Finance Authority and Public School Capital Outlay Council, and design money,” Hendrix said. “So once we’ve got the design done and everybody accepts it, we’ll go back to the state and tell them we’re ready for building money.”

Hendrix said he is fully aware of the process.

“I was involved in the building of the high school, middle school in Mountainair before I left there,” he said. “And, I was involved in the process in Los Lunas when we were building Bosque Farms Elementary when I was principal there.”

“The Public School Finance Authority is like part-owners of the building,” he said. “Each district has a certain portion that they pay toward a building and PSFA pays the other portion of it. Our portion here is 28 percent of the building, and PSFA covers the other 72 percent.”

The new building will include a couple of features missing from Sarracino, he said.

“We’ll have a culinary arts lab and there’ll be a separate room for robotics, which has been part of the middle school program for quite a while,” Hendrix said. “Basically, it’ll be an all-purpose room.”

Hendrix said although the proximity to the high school is close, the design and location of the school emphasize student separation.

“We took great pains to design it so there won’t be high school and middle school kids together,” he said. “We really don’t want middle schoolers mixing with high school kids.”

The location will be on the southwest side of the high school.

“Where the portables are right now, between the baseball field and the old softball field,” Hendrix said. “And school bus access is also part of the design. We own all the property around the high school, both north and south of it.

“Since we own that part on the north side, we’re talking about putting in a road from Fowler into that area, just for buses,” he said. “That would keep our bus traffic separate from the parent traffic.”

As for building security, “it will be the most up-to-date secure building in the district,” he said. “There’ll be a security vestibule that won’t let anyone in until we know who they are. It’s going to be quite modern.

“The building we’re in now is about a hundred percent bigger than what we need. It was designed for just over 700 kids, and now we have around 330 kids,” Hendrix said. “That means we’re paying for a lot of heating and cooling that we just don’t need. That’s a big drain on the district.”

Besides that, there are other issues with the Sarracino building.

“The issues took in the floors, ceiling and wall finishes, all the HVAC and lighting,” Hendrix said. “Just about everything you can think of needing to be redone. The fire suppression system needed to be redone. All the intercom and communication systems in it.”

When all is said and done, he anticipates the new middle should be ready for students not before well into the 2023-24 school year.

John Larson, El Defensor Chieftain