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Thursday, June 26, 2008

After-School Programs at Vista Grande May Be Delayed for Year

By Lee Ross
Mountain View Telegraph
      There may be no relief for a year for parents who want their kids to use Vista Grande Community Center for after-school programs.
    Programs have been held at San Antonito Elementary School for the past year while the Vista Grande Community Center was closed for construction of the attached Fisher and Smith Memorial Gymnasium, a 19,000-square-foot, 500-seat facility.
    Now the gymnasium is basically completed and the community center may be reopening soon. However, that doesn't mean the before- and after-school programs will be moved back to the community center. While the center was closed, the county found a state statute that says its single-axle vans may no longer be used to transport students from San Antonito to Vista Grande.
    There are other ways to transport the kids, but each solution has seemed to come to a dead end.
    The community center is about a mile away from the elementary, and there is a trail to the community center, built several years ago with $50,000 of legislative funds.
    The funds were appropriated by Sen. Sue Wilson Beffort, tacked on as an addition to the Vista Grande Community Center.
    “How could it be that these children are going to be deprived of this beautiful gym?” Beffort asked at a meeting to kick off a regional trails council in the area.
    She said that no one had called her and she only knew about the issue because of an article in the Telegraph, but said she was interested in finding a solution, even if it means kicking in funding for a bus program.
    “It seems like it is fixable,” she said.
    There is a potential hazard along the short hike to the center because it crosses La Madera Road, which is used to access East Mountain High School. Ovidiu Viorica, a parent at the school, said the county hasn't examined the trail as a possibility, however.
    “For whatever reason, the county is not willing to even talk about that potential because they're afraid of liability,” Viorica said. “It was not even looked at as a possibility.”
    Viorica said several parents have also been in contact with transportation officials, and that they seemed willing to meet to work out the issues, but that has not happened.
    According to APS director of student transportation Patrick Garcia, buses can pick up and drop off students at designated day-care centers, which may include community centers such as Vista Grande.
    Garcia said students who have transferred into the school but live outside the normal area for bus service could not be transported.
    “We're not funded to transport those students,” he said, adding that parents who transfer their students sign away their claim to bus transportation. “That paper says you're getting this transfer on the condition that you provide your own transportation.”
    Julie Morgas Baca, deputy county manager for Bernalillo County's community services, has taken the lead in finding a solution to the transportation and other issues brought up by parents, and attended a meeting with the parents in May, along with Bernalillo County Commissioner Michael Brasher.
    In a teleconference call with Brasher, Baca said she didn't know how many students were transfers, but some estimates have the number at roughly a third. Despite several phone calls, officials from the elementary were not reached for comment.
    Baca said there will not likely be a solution to the problem this school year, but said there may be a solution by August 2010.
    “(Brasher) has decided we're going to take the bull by the horns,” Baca said, “instead of depending on answers from APS.”
    Brasher said there will be another meeting to discuss the issues on July 10 at Vista Grande Community Center at 6:30 p.m.
    “I still hope that the people that were elected and hired specifically to offer solutions to this kind of problem will come through,” Viorica said.
   

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