Photo: Archuleta School District Chief Executive of Operations Josh Sanchez, during a November 14, 2024, introductory presentation at Pagosa Springs Elementary School, concerning the future of the District’s facilities.
During the November 14 presentation at Pagosa Springs Elementary School, we learned that three of the numerous ASD buildings — the two Middle School buildings and the Elementary School — were over 50 years old, and have some maintenance issues, as older buildings often have.
Chief Executive of Operations, Josh Sanchez, briefly flashed a long list of necessary repairs on the screen.
The two choices for the community, regarding these facilities, seemed to be:
1. Tear them down, or sell them… and build brand new schools
Or
2. Keep maintaining them, with all their physical limitations
Either of these options could be funded with a voter-approved, tax-funded bond measure. The amount of the tax increase would presumably be very different, between these two options.
One alternative, not discussed on Thursday by Mr. Sanchez or ASD Superintendent Rick Holt, was:
3. Keep maintaining them, but also renovate and expand them, to reduce their physical limitations
When I asked Superintendent Holt about option 3 at the November 14 presentation, he seemed to dismiss it as not worthy of consideration.
I believe it’s very worthy of consideration.
Disclosure: I currently serve as a volunteer member of the Pagosa Peak Open School (PPOS) board of directors, and PPOS could conceivably benefit from a future bond issue approved by local voters. This editorial reflects only my own opinions and observations, and not necessarily the opinions of the PPOS board or staff.
I have no doubt a certain number of Pagosa Springs taxpayers would be willing to pay higher property taxes to help fund brand new school buildings for Archuleta School District staff and students. But I suspect 2025 may not be the best election year to place that type of tax increase question before the entire voting community. Many property owners in Archuleta County saw dramatic increases in their property tax obligations last year, and may not be eager to vote for additional increases in 2025.
Just saying.
At the same time, I suspect that a bond measure aimed at “renovating” our existing schools, and making them safer and more comfortable and more versatile, would find wider support in our community than a “tear down and replace” bond measure.
At the moment, ASD seems to enjoy the trust of the general community. An honest, transparent planning process and subsequent election campaign would probably allow them to retain that trust.
When a friend and I were discussing the idea that 50-year-old school buildings are ripe to be torn down, he mentioned Oxford University, one of the world’s most respected centers of learning.
Founded in 1096 AD, and still offering a decent education, or so I hear. Some of the buildings are 500 years old. It would appear that the regents at Oxford University have figured out ways to preserve the value of old buildings.
I’m again thinking back to a similar “brand new school buildings” campaign conducted by ASD, back in 2011 — right in the midst of the Great Recession. That campaign failed miserably.
Pagosa’s economy seems healthier now than in 2011, but at the same time, almost everyone here just got hammered with a big property tax increase. Wrong time to bring this question to the voters? Once again?
At the end of the November 14 presentation at the Elementary School, Superintendent Rick Holt invited the audience to log into Survey Monkey and participate in an online survey hosted by ASD, related to a desire for new school buildings. I was sorely disappointed by the survey, however, when I reviewed it. It appeared, to me, to be unscientific and poorly designed.
Here’s a screenshot of questions about Pagosa Springs Elementary School:
These issues are well understood by certain ASD staff, but 95% of the voting public knows absolutely nothing about most of these issues — electrical systems, ventilation systems, plumbing systems, cafeteria issues — at the Elementary School.
The survey then asks exactly the same questions about the Middle School, and then about the High School.
What is the point in asking parents and local taxpayers to weigh in on issues they know nothing about?
Then the survey continues:
For the community — the taxpaying public — to provide valid answers to the three questions above, they need to first know a number of things.
- What is the projected cost of “Routine Maintenance”? And isn’t that something we need to do, regardless?
- What “Renovations” are we talking about, and what would they cost the residential or business property owner in higher taxes?
- What would it cost the taxpayers, to replace the Elementary School? Are we also building athletic fields?
- What would it cost the taxpayers, to replace two Middle School buildings? Are we also building athletic fields?
- Are we crazy to be even talking about “Replacing” the High School, built in 1998? Or its “Renovation”?
- Does the District think Pagosa Springs voters are made of money?
Some Daily Post readers may object to my characterization of ASD’s survey as “unscientific”. A scientific survey is distributed in a calculated way, so that all segments of society are represented by the limited data. When an organization simply posts a political survey online and invites anyone and everyone to participate, with no attempt to reach out to groups who would normally not participate in the survey, what the organization typically gets back is data that doesn’t accurately reflect the opinions of the entire community. What the organization gets, instead, is over-representation by “friends of the organization”. This approach can produce seriously biased results.
And I was especially disappointed that one of our District’s public schools — Pagosa Peak Open School — was completely ignored during the November 14 presentation, and within the online survey.
It appears that this flawed ASD survey will form the basis for a presentation of “What the Community Wants” at next month’s School Board meeting?
Our ASD School Board consists of five highly educated, intelligent people. Hopefully, they will understand that their staff has distributed a poorly designed, unscientific, and perhaps biased, survey. And hopefully, the School Board will understand that the survey did not provide the public with the essential information we needed, to honestly answer the questions.
The essential information being: “What will these different options cost us?”
Hopefully, ASD wants to retain our trust.
And speaking of highly educated, intelligent people, we obviously have a different trust issue going on between our two local water districts — Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD) and San Juan Water Conservancy District (SJWCD), which jointly hold a 667-acre ranch property in the Dry Gulch Valley, north of downtown Pagosa on behalf of the taxpayers and PAWSD customers.
These two districts seem to have lost trust in each other, to judge by the way they are publicly criticizing one another. Reminds me of what I read about Democrats and Republicans in Washington DC.
Read Part Six, tomorrow…