Ground-breaking ceremony marks the start of a brand new Dennis Chavez Elementary

It took two rounds, but in fairly short order, the ground-breaking ceremony for a new Dennis Chavez Elementary School in Los Chavez was successfully completed last week.

The row of golden shovels was first taken up by members of the Belen Board of Education, administrators from Belen Consolidated Schools, as well as representatives from Jaynes Corp, the contractor for the project, and architect firm Huitt-Zollars.

The second group to throw dirt was arguably the most important — a flock of Roadrunners from DCE and principal Andrea Montaño donned hard hats and turned over a shovelful of sandy dirt on the now nearly empty campus on N.M. 314.

The campus has been vacant since students and staff were relocated to the H.T. Jaramillo Elementary campus in Belen at the beginning of the 2022-23 school year in anticipation of the rebuild beginning in the spring of 2023.

Jaramillo Elementary was officially closed as a school site for BCS at the end of the 2021-22 school year after the district had to redraw attendance boundaries to account for dropping enrollment. In order to continue receiving state funds to rebuild school sites, the district had to “right size” its elementary campuses to make use of unused space.

Getting approval from the New Mexico Public Schools Finance Authority for demolition of all the buildings on the campus except for the gymnasium and plans for a new school was a long, detailed process.

Demolition was completed in September last year, leaving the DCE campus ready for a rebuild.

On a clear New Mexico morning, Thursday, Feb. 6, dozens gathered on the campus to celebrate the next phase in the project. After four years of work, BCS Superintendent Lawrence Sanchez said the day was a time to pause and celebrate how far they had come and recognize they were not done yet.

“A theme of every thing I’ve done this week has been giving thanks,” Sanchez said Thursday. “We need to stop and give thanks at this point in the project.”

The new school marks a place for learning, growth and opportunity for the children of Los Chavez and all of Valencia County, the superintendent said.

“Before we look forward, I want to thank the community for its unwaivering belief and support of education,” he said. “I want to thank students, past and present, and staff.”

Sanchez said the design for the new school created by Huitt-Zollars captures the spirit of Los Chavez, and thanked the company for its willingness to listen to the community. According to the time line provided by Jaynes, the new school is projected to be finished by August 2026.

The new school will continue to bear the name of the late U.S. Sen. Dennis Chavez, who represented the people of New Mexico in the United States Congress from 1931 to 1962, a man Sanchez said “dedicated his life to fairness, opportunity and progress.”

The late senator’s granddaughter, Gloria Tristani, and niece, Valencia County historian Maggie McDonald, attended the ground-breaking ceremony.

Tristani said she was honored and excited to see the new school come to fruition, remembering her grandfather’s dedication to education.

“He only went to school until the seventh grade, but he continued educating himself by reading at the Albuquerque Public Library,” she recalled.

Belen Board of Education president Jim Danner said the new campus is an example of what the board has been moving toward — student outcome focused governance.

“This will be a safe, innovative, nurturing learning environment,” Danner said.

While the student’s and staff of DCE have been temporarily uprooted and housed in the old HTJ campus, Montaño said the Roadrunners continue to succeed, achieving spotlight status, according to the state’s school performance reporting system, NM Vistas.

“That was due to our attendance, attitude and school culture,” Montaño said. “Our school motto, ‘Where kindness leads, academics succeeds,’ truly honors the ideals of Dennis Chavez.”