The publicly funded, statewide, residential charter high school is scheduled to open in August with an estimated 120 students in grades nine to 11.

The John Gaw Meem-designed school building at the northwest corner of Paseo de Peralta and East Alameda Street has been vacant since 2006, when the archdiocese closed the school and consolidated Catholic elementary education at the Santo Niño Regional Catholic School on the city’s south side.

The Cathedral School sits on downtown property owned by the Archdiocese of Santa Fe that was slated for commercial/residential redevelopment, but those plans are on hold. “We were getting ready to go for final entitlements when the market crashed,” said Jim Cutropia, director of finance and administration for the cathedral. He said it might be four or five years before the economy recovers sufficiently to allow the project to go forward.

In the meantime, Cutropia added, “Jim (Ledyard, the head of new arts school) came along and said, ‘I need a home.’ ”

Everyone agrees that the arrangement suits both the church and the school, whose students will have the advantage of easy access to galleries, museums and performance spaces, including the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi.

The lease on the 20,000-square-foot property begins May 1, but next month the members of the school’s staff (called consultants for the moment) will move into the school offices, where they will meet with prospective students and parents. The lease will run for four years, with an option to renew.

The New Mexico School for the Arts won an exemption from New Mexico’s charter school law to allow it to set admission criteria. Other charter schools in the state admit students through a lottery.

About 95 students are in the process of applying to the school. Some of them will be invited to auditions, which are scheduled the second week of March in Albuquerque and the third week of March in Santa Fe.

The auditions will be conducted by one of four panels comprising four artist/educators each in dance, visual arts, theater or music. They’ll be looking for students with “promise, aptitude and passion” for the arts.

Ledyard said he has received nearly 200 applications for teaching positions and plans to start with five arts teachers and five or six teachers in academic subjects required for high school students in the state.

He has been traveling around New Mexico talking to parents and students about the school.

The two-story building, constructed in 1947, has 14 large, airy classrooms, a library, a brick-floored cafeteria, 1950s-era murals of St. Francis in the hallways and stairwells and a gym that will be fitted out with ballet barres and mirrors for dance classes. Some work will have to be done to make the building accessible to the handicapped, but except for the gopher mounds on the front lawn, it is considered to be in good condition.

The School for the Arts expects to announce in the next week or so where boarding students will live while attending school in Santa Fe. The school will provide transportation from that residential site to the Alameda Street location. Those arriving by train from Albuquerque might be able to use public buses.

Although the school has lots of other expenses — arts education, mandated outreach, residential facilities — it will receive the same funding as other schools in the state for educating students and maintaining a building and grounds. Because the school exempted itself from federal stimulus funds available to new public charter schools, the state is kicking in $528,000 to get it started. And the school has commitments for three major gifts for operating expenses over the next several years from the Thornburg Charitable Foundation, the Thaw Charitable Trust and a third, unidentified foundation. It has also received gifts of computers and other equipment. Students will pay for room and board on a sliding scale.

Finally securing a temporary home for the school, Ledyard said, is “energizing us to move ahead.”

Board chairwoman Catherine Oppenheimer added that finding the school “embedded in the heart of the community is a super place to start.” The New Mexico School for the Arts had considered many other locations, among them the old Cristo Rey School on the east side, Santa Fe Public Schools property at or near Alameda Middle School and the College of Santa Fe campus.

Ledyard said he couldn’t give a figure for the cost of the lease, although that will ultimately become public, and the board is still working on an estimate for annual operating costs. But, he said, “The city is happy; the archdiocese is happy; and obviously we’re delighted.”

By: Anne Constable | The New Mexican