Navigating public education small school options

For now, a hallway helps define the boundary between two schools sharing the same building in Mesilla.

Mesilla Valley Leadership Academy students have their own wing, bell schedule and lunch. Rio Grande Preparatory Institute students have theirs. They cross paths for some science classes, electives and career and technical education, but otherwise the middle school and high school that came together under one roof this fall remain largely separate.

Whether they should stay that way has become a much more difficult question.

Las Cruces Public Schools administrators see an opportunity to turn two of the district's smallest schools into a single sixth-through-12th-grade school, giving the popular MVLA room to grow while creating a more sustainable future for an RGPI that has lost enrollment and faces state-mandated intervention after years of underperformance.

MVLA parents see something else: a successful school their children deliberately chose being changed, at least in part, to solve problems it didn't create. School Board President Pam Cort sees truth in both positions.

“We need more community input,” Cort said. “We really need student input.”

Cort said the board isn't ready to approve the proposed reorganization, and she would prefer to give the schools the year board members originally believed they would have to determine what works, what doesn't, and what a combined school might eventually look like.

But simply maintaining the status quo isn't much of an option either. RGPI has reached More Rigorous Intervention status under New Mexico's school accountability system after failing to improve enough to exit Comprehensive Support and Improvement status.

State rules require LCPS to develop an intervention plan to significantly restructure and redesign the school. The options include evidence-based restructuring, restarting the school, or closing it. The New Mexico Public Education Department must approve the district's plan and can select an intervention if the district fails to obtain approval for one.

To Cort, that means the debate isn't simply about whether RGPI needs to change. It is about whether combining it with MVLA is the right change, and whether LCPS knows enough yet to make that decision.

“Kids can't achieve unless adult behaviors change,” Cort said. “We have to change how we think about that school because we're not doing it right. They're not having success, and that's not the kids. That's us.”

The situation has left LCPS working against a clock. Cort said the district is expected to submit its plan to PED in January. She hopes the state will accept a proposal that allows LCPS additional time to develop the new school rather than forcing a reorganization before the district, teachers, parents and students have worked through its details.

That urgency wasn't part of what MVLA families thought they were signing up for last spring. MVLA had a different problem: success had left it without enough space.

The small middle school has developed a following around its leadership-focused culture, including a house system based on the Ron Clark Academy model. Families apply to attend, and the school has a waiting list but little ability to increase enrollment in its former building.

Rio Grande Prep had the opposite problem. It had plenty of room. So, LCPS moved MVLA into RGPI's much larger campus this fall.

Rebecca Cram, president of the MVLA Parent Teacher Organization, said parents understood the move as an opportunity for MVLA to grow while the two schools continued operating separately. Cort said that was also her understanding when the board learned of the plan in April. At least, that is, until the research can be completed.

“My understanding at that point is that we were going to move them in there for a year and then assess and then figure out our next steps,” Cort said.

She said the board was later “caught a little flat footed” when discussions accelerated toward creating a single 6-12 school.

LCPS Deputy Superintendent Wendi Miller-Tomlinson remembers the longer-term plan somewhat differently. She said the principals of both schools knew in the spring that co-location was intended as a step toward eventually combining the programs.

“It was not just, hey, we're going to move a school here and we're going to be roommates forever,” Miller-Tomlinson said. “It was we're going to move here and, you know, the goal is to combine into a school.”

Miller-Tomlinson said RGPI's intervention status and school-improvement funding didn't create the merger proposal. The larger issue, she said, is sustainability.

LCPS has been examining how many students are served by its schools of choice and alternative programs and how many teachers, administrators and other resources are assigned to them. In a district facing declining enrollment, Miller-Tomlinson said operating two very small schools separately doesn't make sense over the long term.

“Having two very small schools is really not sustainable,” she said.

Cort sees the same financial pressure, although it isn't evenly distributed between the two schools. She said RGPI spent more than $47,000 per student in 2024-25 as its enrollment dwindled, compared with a little more than $13,000 at MVLA. Cram said her review of state data showed MVLA's per-student spending comparable to other LCPS middle schools.

The potential savings, then, aren't necessarily about making MVLA less expensive. They are about the cost of maintaining two complete structures for schools with only about 160 students combined.

There are currently two principals, along with separate office, counseling, and other support structures. A combined school would eventually have one principal.

LCPS also isn't planning around the assumption that enrollment will remain at 160. Miller-Tomlinson said the district hopes a redesigned 6-12 school could add 100 to 150 students in its first year and eventually make much fuller use of a building with capacity for 368. The campus is also receiving investments in career and technical education, including a CTE center and student-run Mercado.

That could create something LCPS doesn't currently have: a small-school pathway in which students begin with MVLA's leadership model and move into high school programs built around careers, certifications, internships and other postsecondary preparation.

The question parents keep returning to is whether students will choose it. MVLA students can already attend RGPI after eighth grade, and many don't.

Some choose comprehensive high schools because they want athletics, band or other activities. Others choose Arrowhead Park Early College High School and other academically focused programs.

Cram questions what changes simply because the two schools acquire one name.

“It's a student choice thing,” she said. “It doesn't necessarily mean those eighth graders going to ninth grade are going to stay.”

That question is particularly important because the district's sustainability argument depends in part on growth. Adding MVLA's current students to RGPI would immediately make the combined school larger, but it wouldn't by itself demonstrate that more students want the high-school program or address the reasons RGPI's enrollment and performance declined.

Cram said parents aren't asking the district to ignore RGPI's problems. They are asking why solving them requires changing MVLA. They also worry about what could be lost along the way.

Families applied to MVLA because they knew what they were choosing, a small middle school with a particular culture, leadership structure, teachers and approach to education. Cram said parents don't yet know what all of that looks like inside a new 6-12 school.

Miller-Tomlinson said there is no plan requiring teachers to reapply for their jobs and no anticipated reduction in teaching staff. If enrollment grows as projected, she said, LCPS would need more teachers. She also said many of the other details haven't been decided. That is partly intentional.

Miller-Tomlinson said the district wants the eventual principal, teachers, students and families involved in designing the school rather than having administrators dictate everything in advance. She acknowledged, however, that feedback from families has made clear they want a better picture of the proposed school before the process goes further.

That leaves the two sides approaching the same uncertainty from opposite directions.

The district doesn't want to fully design a school before the people who will be part of it have a chance to shape it.

Parents don't want the board to approve a reorganization before they know what will replace the school they already have.

Cort believes there is time to work between those positions. She wants to hear directly from students at both schools, as well as teachers and families, before voting on a reorganization. Even MVLA's successful Ron Clark-inspired model, she said, shouldn't automatically be extended through high school simply because adults think it would work.

“I really, really want to know what the kids want,” Cort said.

The district is currently scheduling listening sessions to allow members of the two school communities to provide input. At the same time, there seems to be pressure for a decision and a board vote.

And still hovering over it all are the state's demands. NMPED's current school-improvement process includes continued review of plans, data and progress for schools designated for Comprehensive Support and Improvement and More Rigorous Intervention.

Nor does waiting solve RGPI's enrollment or performance problems. Cort said LCPS needs to present PED with a credible path forward. What she isn't ready to say is that the district already knows exactly what that path should be.

MVLA still needs room to grow. RGPI still needs a future. And LCPS still has to find a way to sustain small-school options while serving fewer students districtwide.

For now, the two schools share a building. Whether they eventually should share an identity is the question LCPS has yet to answer.