Los Lunas Board of Education announces intent to close RGE

LOS LUNAS — The Los Lunas Schools Board of Education recently approved establishing a work plan to close Raymond Gabaldon Elementary by no later than the end of the 2026-27 school year.

Potential closure of RGE was first heard by the board for consideration at the May 21 BOE meeting where LLS Board President Michelle Osowski presented a proposal for the closure of the longtime elementary school.

Establishing a work plan was discussed at length in a BOE workshop held June 6, and the board unanimously voted to approve the work plan at a special board meeting held the same day.

The plan includes recommendations from LLS Superintendent Ryan Kettler and a proposed timeline.

However, as demonstrated in the discussions surrounding the complex issue, there are many moving parts and contingencies in play. Board member David Vickers emphasized at the June 6 meeting that the “plan can change as we go.”

Kettler confirmed the intent is to close RGE by the end of the 2026-27 school year or sooner, but he also said there currently remains a possibility that RGE will not close.

“All considerations need to be looked at to include staffing, funding and adequacy of space in the other schools before RGE can close,” said Kettler.

During the May 21 meeting, Osowski said RGE is the third oldest building in the district and explained facility consultants, hired by the district, found much of the building to be in poor condition and parts of it are not up to state facility standards.

Previously, it was thought construction of a new campus was being considered for RGE to address the facility’s condition, but a combination of factors ranging from declining enrollments, budget constraints, under utilization of facilities and school building adequacy may have set RGE on a new trajectory.

“Having facilities that are below adequacy, I think, sends the wrong message to kids, because we do value all of our students, and we want to make sure that all of our students have the best that we can possibly give them,” said Kettler.

An award from the state’s Public School Capital Outlay Council received by LLS to establish a pre-k center at RGE is currently a significant obstacle regarding how to proceed with RGE. Kettler said one of the first things that has to be decided on to get to the full closure is what to do with the pre-k award.

Kettler said in the coming months LLS cabinet and facilities members will be meeting with Visions in Planning, an external company made up of community and facility planning consultants, and the New Mexico Public School Finance Authority to identify and review all options.

This would include reviewing the pre-k award to see if it would be best to keep the award and build the pre-k center at RGE, move the award to another site to build a center, rescind the award and enter RGE into the (PSFA) rankings to see where it would rank for a construction/renovation award or proceed with the closure of the school as voted on by the board.

The time line shared at the June 6 meeting plans for information derived from these discussions to then be presented to the board ideally around September or October in work sessions. Then, through November and into January 2025, the timeline includes holding public meetings to gather community input to help inform the BOE in making its final decision on RGE’s future which, ideally, would take place in February 2025.

RGE was named in honor of Raymond Gabaldon, a long-time teacher and administrator for LLS. Kettler said at the June 18 BOE meeting that he had recently met with one of Gabaldon’s sons, Dennis Gabaldon, who is a PE teacher at Los Lunas Elementary, regarding the future of the school.

“The family’s request, he and his brother, is that their father’s name be maintained,” Kettler said. “They would like to have the building remain and be repurposed. That’s their very first ask of the district. If that is not possible, they are asking the name be retained through some sort of memorial or in some other way in the district.”

The estimated construction improvement cost for RGE is around $26.7 million. Kettler said the physical plant of the building, including factors such as the condition of the exterior, interior, portables and code compliance, was rated as borderline by the district’s facility consultants.

Consultants also gave RGE an adequacy rating of 43 percent, which is considered poor. LLS construction supervisor Tiffany McMinn said adequacy in this context refers to the state adequacy standards stipulating “square footage for how many kids you have in the classroom.”

An RGE parent who attended the workshop expressed concern about closing a school in a rapidly growing community, but he thanked Kettler for presenting a timeline that spans a few years out.

“When this came to our knowledge, it was kind of like a knee-jerk reaction. We thought, ‘It’s happening now, and it’s happening fast,’ so that’s why we all showed up because we didn’t want this to happen within a couple months,” he said. “Giving us a timeframe over the next three years of what we’re moving toward, I deeply appreciate that, because that at least gives us a little peace of mind that there will be a solution.”