From buildings to buses

At 2 a.m., laptops covered the table alongside research articles, financial spreadsheets, state statutes, and endless draft pages. After completing our full-time jobs, our founding team met night after night, hoping to build a school where students could thrive through Spanish language acquisition and hands-on STEAM learning. 

Jay is why I am passionate about our goal and why I pushed through those late nights. Now a first grader, Jay loves Sonic and learns best when he is in smaller group settings. He prefers hands-on activities like building with Legos or drawing pictures to show how he’s feeling. He excels when he has educators who design a safe, stable environment, such as creating a quiet corner for him. Every child deserves a school built to support their unique needs.

Our founding team wasn't backed by a large organization or a team of consultants. We were educators, parents, and community members who believed Las Cruces needed a high-quality public-school option, so we wrote the application ourselves.

For two years, that routine defined my life. Between late-night writing sessions, community outreach, and navigating state systems, we poured over 1,600 hours into bringing Inspira STEAM Academy to life.

Charter schools are a vital piece of New Mexico’s public education, serving 30,000 students or roughly 10 percent of state K-12 enrollment. A rigorous approval process is necessary to ensure new public schools are academically sound, financially responsible, and prepared to serve students, but the approval process is only the beginning.

Once approved, charter schools must also secure a facility and ensure it provides a safe, high-quality learning environment for students, as well as determine transportation needs. Acquiring and financing a building and providing reliable travel to school should not be as challenging as it is today. 

First, New Mexico must ensure public charter schools have access to viable facilities, whether through expanded lease assistance, facilities grants, or access to unused public buildings, so founding teams do not spend years searching for space before serving a single student.

At Inspira, we experienced these issues firsthand: housed within a charter high school, even gaining consistent building access has been difficult. For two years, our founding team searched Las Cruces for a permanent facility, but finding an affordable space that met educational standards and allowed for growth was tough.

Property owners often require multi-year leases that conflict with our gradual growth model, while complex facility requirements create additional hurdles for small schools already managing enrollment, staffing, and daily operations. Ultimately, students like Jay should not have to wait while schools spend years navigating these barriers. 

Second, New Mexico should establish flexible transportation funding for charter schools. In our first year at Inspira, we have been fortunate to use federal grant funding to provide buses. But what happens when those funds are no longer available?

Families should not lose access to a school because they lack transportation, and charter schools should not have to choose between getting students to school and funding learning. If we want Jay to benefit from an inquiry-based, bilingual education, getting him to school cannot be an afterthought.

Launching Inspira STEAM Academy was the most challenging and rewarding experience of my career so far. But the future of public education in New Mexico shouldn't depend on local educators overcoming impossible barriers just to secure a building and get charter kids to school safely.

By providing dedicated facilities funding and sustainable transportation support for new schools, New Mexico can empower the next generation of leaders to build the vibrant, life-changing public schools Jay and all of our children deserve.

Jessica Castro-Buelna is a co-founder of Inspira STEAM Academy in Las Cruces, a public charter school, and has worked in New Mexico public education for nearly a decade. She is a 2026-27 Teach Plus New Mexico Senior Policy Fellow.