Angela Robbins’s paper, entitled “An Analysis of Planning Practices Which Impact Albuquerque Public Schools: A Case for Concurrent Planning,” addresses the planning of public schools.
Angela Robbins
University of New Mexico
School of Architecture + Planning
Downtown Districts, City of Albuquerque Planning Department.
Jury
Jonathan Barnett
Philip Enquist (Chair)
Alex Krieger
The American dream is complete with mom, apple pie, and a school within walking distance of every American home. Trouble is mom is not at home, doesn’t bake anymore, and the home she lives in is not in the boundaries of the school she wants her kids to attend. These trends in the character of the American family put Albuquerque Public Schools (APS) in a capital bind. The enrollment of APS has dramatically decreased since 1994 due to movement of affordable new housing to the edges of the established metropolitan area; yet, APS has been building a school a year for twelve years at the edges.
This analysis of planning practices in the regional area of Albuquerque, New Mexico, demonstrates how the expressed dream of schools as the hub of the community fails to become reality as land use decisions are made. The analysis is critical, yet fair, in eliciting planning weaknesses in all political jurisdictions: State of New Mexico, Bernalillo County, City of Albuquerque, and Albuquerque Public Schools (APS).
A Albuquerque/Bemalillo County Comprehensive Plan, 1988 (Comp Plan), goal speaks for “stronger communication and planning links with area schools.” Citizens in the APS district consistently call for The School to be the hub of the community. Yet, there are numerous examples of disparate planning efforts that interfere and prevent the community from reaching its goal.
The Comp Plan itself fails to identify how The School should perform in the community. A recent Centers and Corridors Amendment to the Comprehensive Plan completely omits all 126 schools in the 28th largest school district in the United States.
A Downtown Albuquerque Strategic Implementation Plan is another example of disparate planning. The educational component of this plan follows:
This is a good goal for the City of Albuquerque; however, the City has asked APS to build a new, exemplary school—missing the fact that APS already has three exemplary schools downtown. Further, the City has proposed demolition of housing adjacent to the downtown elementary school. This is housing where families live and whose children can walk to school.
Several additional examples demonstrate that the City, County, and APS are passing ships in the night in terms of utilizing opportunities to plan concurrently. Recommendations for concurrent planning are detailed in the final section of the paper. In addition to recommending a State mandate for concurrent planning, the author urges planners to plan for people: Plan communities and schools so that students, teachers, parents and support staff have a reasonable opportunity to walk to school, live, work, and move around their community school.
The American dream is complete with mom, apple pie and a school within walking distance of every American home. Trouble is mom is not at home, doesn't bake anymore and the home she lives in is not in the boundaries of the school she wants her kids to attend. These trends in the character of the American family put Albuquerque Public Schools (APS) in a capital bind. The enrollment of APS has dramatically decreased since 1994 due to movement of affordable new housing to the edges of the established metropolitan area; yet, APS has been building a school a year for twelve years at the edges.
There are many policies and plans which express the “dream” described above. The Albuquerque/ Bemalillo County Comprehensive Plan, 1988 (Comp Plan)—the rank one plan which is intended to guide all other planning efforts in the City and County—expresses goals regarding schools as follows (page 122):
Goal 7. EDUCATION, Policy b: Stronger communication and planning links with area schools and educational institutions shall be established. Possible Techniques
1) Involve Albuquerque Public Schools, the City, and the County in long range planning efforts and other pertinent education matters which may affect changing neighborhood characteristics.
2) Cooperate on joint use of public facilities and lands.
As one can see, the goal refers to a process of cooperative planning efforts rather than the character and stature of public education in the community. But let’s accept that planning links are a good start in achieving the “dream” that we have about schools as our most important community asset. This author has observed that, as development occurs, the Comp Plan takes a back seat to other planning tools like zone ordinances and zone changes, private rights to develop property, disparities between location of affordable housing and existing schools, traffic counts, and myriad other issues. Additionally, there is an onerous misperception that new school facilities are better than old schools.
In this presentation, I describe a number of planning efforts that have come to my attention through my work as the Director of the Facilities Master Plan for APS and through my work as a City Councilor in Albuquerque. There is a brief section on policies that generate excessive impacts to the APS capital program followed by recommendations that will curb unchecked capital growth in the school district. This work is intended to be general in content so that a number of issues can be illuminated. Many of the identified issues, and consequent impacts to development patterns, are not readily apparent to those in professional planning practice in the geographic area. Recommendations are presented in hopes that planners and land use practitioners can be conscious of the need for all political jurisdictions to plan concurrently.
“I read this paper, ’Wow! This paper is terrific.’ It brings the subjects of land use policy, building communities, and education together and is quite revealing. The obvious disconnect between the public school agenda and the current locations of residential neighborhoods is disturbing. I agree with this paper that schools should be reinforced as the hub of the neighborhood. This paper is applicable to many communities throughout the United States.”
—Alex Krieger, juror
Albuquerque Public Schools encompasses 1200 square miles on either side of the middle Rio Grande. For the sake of discussion, the east boundary is 15 miles into the Sandia and Manzano Mountains. North and south boundaries reach lsleta and Sandia Pueblos. The west boundary approaches the Rio Puerco about 30 miles from the point where development is taking place now in Albuquerque and includes portions of Laguna and Navajo. So, without a doubt, land use decisions which are made in any governmental jurisdiction within the 1,200 square miles have a serious impact on APS. Jurisdictions include the City, the County, pueblos and reservations, Los Ranchos, Tijeras, Corrales, Sandoval County, Moriarity Public Schools, Torrance County, Rio Rancho Public Schools, Bernalillo Public Schools, and incorporating areas such as the east mountains.
Any development approvals in any of the above political jurisdictions have the potential to impact the capital needs of APS. In fact, all private land developers utilize schools—the availability or future construction of schools—as the primary marketing tool for selling housing. It is not uncommon for a private developer to represent (or misrepresent) [1] the boundaries of a particular neighborhood school or the construction of a new school while making a sale.
Simultaneously, citizens in the APS district consistently call for The School to be the hub of the community. Most will argue that the school can be the unifying force in a community. An article in the August 2000 AIA Architect describes the school in this way:
In 1995, Gaylord built a new high school that has become a focal point for the community, a shared resource that binds the town in ways that were impossible before.
But this article refers to a new school; it is the exceptional planner who recognizes that a revitalization project at an existing school binds the neighborhood and stimulates redevelopment in the existing community.
The success of a school, with no exceptions, results in increased interest in home ownership within that school boundary. So, a cycle is established which contributes to suburban sprawl and excessive public school capital costs: 1) governmental bodies allow development based on property owner’s rights to develop; 2) the developer produces huge tracts of residences; 3) parents wish to live in these tracts; 4) parents do not wish to drive students outside of their neighborhood; 5) students have a “right” to have a school to which they can walk; 6) APS builds the school; 7) realtors market the new tract which will have a school at its core; 8) families move out of the “old” core; 9) demand for housing increases in a radiating manner around the new school; 10) development spins away from the metropolitan core to an every-increasing perimeter.
Albuquerque Public Schools responds to the development phenomenon by adjusting its long-range plan—the APS Facilities Master Plan. It is clear on the chart FMP Response to Growth the APS public is supporting excessive growth on the fringe at the expense of an existing and declining urban core. The disparity between the increasing capital budget and decreasing operational budget is directly related to fragmented land use decisions and responsibilities in all the political jurisdictions in the APS geographic boundaries.
“The paper emphasizes the great potential benefit to a community if the development strategies and public school agendas are made public and coordinated in some way. Existing schools in older urban neighborhoods should not be eliminated at the expense of new schools in suburban sprawling areas. The author really knows what she is talking about. It is well researched and has workable recommendations. This is a very important topic.”
—Jonathan Barnett, juror
Comprehensive Plan Activities in the City of Albuquerque
The Comp Plan, originally adopted in the early 1980s, identified four major urban centers and held, as a goal, the development of these centers as the City/County’s economic base and areas for higher density. To date, rather than modifying key policies and ordinances in order to obtain the urban center goal (as recommended in the monitoring and implementation section of the Comp Plan), the city has allowed development of new urban centers. In this author’s opinion, only the University urban center, with its mix of education, single and multi-family housing, retail, close proximity of services within walkable distances and the most reliable transit opportunities, has met the Comp Plan goal. [2]
What is missing from the Comp Plan is a neighborhood performance component—even though citizen participation groups express dreams for their respective neighborhoods and rarely care about the greater metropolitan area. The closest the Comp Plan comes to setting goals for livable communities is on page 60:
5. ESTABLISHED AND DEVELOPING URBAN AREAS The Goal is to create a quality urban environment which perpetuates the tradition of identifiable, individual but integrated communities within the metropolitan area and which offers variety and maximum choice in housing, transportation, work areas, and life styles, while creating a visually pleasing built environment.
And ... Possible Techniques 1) Control through performance standards in zone codes or possibly through a land development code.
And ... 3) Control through zoning, platting, and site plan review processes.
There is no mention of schools as the hub of the community. And, performance standards failed in the first attempt at adopting such criteria in the case of the Sawmill Sector Plan. The Comp Plan is currently undergoing a revision vis a vis the Centers and Corridors Amendment and, once again, the revision does not address the community environments.
Centers and Corridors Amendment to the Comprehensive Plan
The Comp Plan update, in recent months, focused on Centers and Corridors. The corridors address only moving from major activity center to major activity center—pursuing a development philosophy of “park once and walk to multiple destinations during the course of a day.” The study defers discussion about what should occur within communities (where it is improbable to “park and walk” given the current single purpose uses) to a Rank Three sector development discussion at a later point in time.
The Centers and Corridors staff produced a map Vacant Land, Centers & Corridors Study Area, October 20, 1999. The map does not include any of the 126 public schools or any private school in the geographic discussion area. At multiple times throughout the day, APS-related traffic accounts for the movement of about 1/5 of the metropolitan population on the road. Movement includes teachers, students and support staff moving to or from their schools. Movement also includes parents and privately contracted school buses.
A spreadsheet was developed delineating the type of corridors: express, major transit, enhanced, etc. All of the corridor types are intended to connect a person with some mode of getting in a vehicle and getting “out” of the neighborhood. No mention has been made of schools or how people will reach these valuable hubs of our neighborhoods.
There are a number of additional policies and procedures which have not been identified in the Centers and Corridors analysis and which profoundly effect movement to and from schools.
The Comp Plan infers that such community planning belongs in the Rank Two and Three plans. Rank Two plans are facility and area-related plans. This is the rank level at which APS could, but does not, interact. These plans include area wide wastewater, the networks of senior centers, libraries, bike trails, electric transmission, city edges, etc. This author’s opinion is that APS would not want to give up its political autonomy to participate in Rank Two planning.
Rank Three planning offers another policy opportunity for schools to plan concurrently with neighborhoods. Yet, even at this level, efforts to plan have been at odds. The Downtown Albuquerque Strategic Implementation Plan is an example of such disparity in planning.
Downtown Revitalization
The City of Albuquerque began a serious round of revitalization efforts in 1998 called the Downtown Albuquerque Strategic and Implementation Plan. The City formed a task force to look at all the issues to downtown redevelopment. One of the key issue committees was Education. The primary request from the City to Albuquerque Public Schools: “Could APS build an exemplary school downtown?”—ignoring the fact that APS already has three exemplary schools downtown. The downtown group produced a map of the Downtown Districts identifying all the key components of those districts. Although there are two schools and the main public library at the core of this map, none were identified on the map.
The housing, designated in yellow on the map, at the west of the Downtown Districts is crucial to maintain the levels of enrollment necessary for keeping the elementary school open. Yet, the City is considering demolition of some of this housing for parking or a public park or another public use.
The Strategic Plan identified several key goals for revitalizing downtown:
What follows is an analysis of the City’s proposed implementation tasks in education and (in parentheses) the net impact to APS if these goals are met:
APS took some time to look inward as a result of the above conflicts to determine what the school district needs in downtown:
It appears that the City and APS are passing ships in the night in terms of utilizing opportunities to plan concurrently. APS continues to progress in school facility improvements downtown and manages to react to enormous pressure to be the hub of the community. However, no offers have come from the City to help in APS’s continued efforts to revitalize the downtown schools.
Needs Assessments and Joint-Use
Albuquerque Public Schools assesses its facilities conditions every five years. The most recent assessment identified $1 billion worth of facilities needs. Each of the 126 schools within the district is managed at the school site by the school principal, so it is difficult to understand the complex joint-use activities that occur at each school. I conducted a brief survey of joint uses in order to determine what the constraints might be which prevent communities from using school facilities before and after school. The results from the principals indicated overwhelmingly that there are no constraints or barriers to community use and that such use is frequent and well received. Simultaneously, I obtained a contractor to assess accessibility of the public to the school, and the contracting architects found the schools to be failing in public access to facilities. The key barriers included lack of separate entries to libraries, assembly areas, and gymnasiums and lack of funds for security and janitorial services.
A recent Long-Range Plan for Community Facilities was contracted by the City’s Department of Family and Community Services. Although APS did not participate in the long range planning process, the plan (page 3) calls for vigorous pursuit of joint use strategies with APS, the County, Los Ranchos and private service providers. The policy recommendation is for a Neighborhood Center Program, which would be sited at 62 APS elementary schools (page 4):
The Neighborhood Center concept is critical to the success of this Long-Range Plan. The geographic distribution of elementary schools (62 within City limits) offers the opportunity to provide Citywide service delivery to residents without the capital outlay that would be required to construct new facilities for use on a neighborhood basis, a current practice that cannot be sustained in the future. If APS does not agree to this concept of joint use, the alternative would be to build larger Multi-Generational Centers and vastly expand the recommended transportation program to meet the City's goal of providing services on a Citywide basis.
To date, no efforts to coordinate the Long-Range Plan for Community Facilities with the APS Facilities Master Plan has occurred.
Planned Communities Criteria
The City of Albuquerque and Bernalillo County jointly adopted criteria to be used when reviewing permit applications for raw land, new, and major developments. The Planned Communities Criteria: Policy Element, February 1991, states that major developments must generate “no net expense” to existing communities. The Level A submittal for approval must provide “a concept plan for provision of schools and parks, other public facilities and services (page 36).” Approval by the City or County of a Level A community master plan, unfortunately, infers that APS has agreed to provide the conceptual schools. Although APS comments on Level A plans, APS is not obligated to construct schools until the Board has approved financial intent and APS voters have approved funding through taxation. In fact, the school district has requested that Level A maps and graphics include the notation: “The schools identified in the ___ master plan are not approved APS schools sites.” (See Appendix for a memo requesting this notation on June 10, 1999.)
Recent major development proposals have indicated a need for over 25 schools - an impact far greater than the capital need of the metro area in the last twenty years. APS does file formal comments on proposed developments as they are submitted to the City or the County. (APS has not been invited to comment on developments adjacent to its legal boundaries, i.e. Torrance, Sandoval, Valencia, or Cibola Counties.) APS must respond according to Board of Education Policy J.01. This School Attendance Areas policy provides for equal opportunity throughout the district and gives preference to alternatives to new school construction:
The Board is committed to considering a variety of alternatives to provide equal opportunities to all students. Alternatives may include, but not be limited to changing and eliminating school attendance areas, developing non-traditional schools, and considering school closures.
In the development review process, APS never states agreement to build a new school; rather, the district proposes boundary changes, alternative schedules, and/or transportation to less crowded schools. (See Appendix for memos dated March 5, 1999, April 8, 1999, and August, 1999.) Two examples of recent formal comments are included in the Appendix but can be summarized briefly as follows:
Development Fees Act
Only two of a dozen or so planned communities are discussed in this paper. Estimated school impact of these two developments is $152 million. There are a dozen or so such planning communities in various stages of design and approval and innumerable others the size of Desert Springs which is described in the March 5, 1999, Appendix memo. Further, APS is considered a developer and pays impacts fees for drainage, streets, etc., just like other developers. In 1993, the New Mexico State Legislature adopted an act allowing municipalities to collect fees from developers to support capital improvements, which are “integral parts of the community” (Development Fees Act of 1993). Schools were not included as an integral part of the community.
The City and County—the owners of facilities which are considered “integral parts of the community”—are the major beneficiaries of development impact fees (or expansion charges) and are also considered “exempt” from these fees in the event of public construction and expansion. Under the Development Fees Act of 1993, public schools are not considered “exempt,” thus are not beneficiaries of impact fees. Construction of an elementary school built four years ago (Double Eagle Elementary) included $830,000 in water and sewer construction and expansion charges and for paving a portion of Lowell Street in the northeast quadrant of Albuquerque Public Schools. These fees were not identified in the APS Facilities Master Plan.
Housing
Residential neighborhoods cycle through predictable high and low numbers of school age children. Not only are these cycles related to birth and death rates, but depending on the age and marketable value of the house, a neighborhood generates predictable bubbles of certain aged students. In a simple example, a brand new “affordable” home with three bedrooms in Neighborhood A will generate young children whose parents are likely to remain in the neighborhood six to twelve years. After six years, the parents may move to a larger, more expensive home in Neighborhood B (likely in a newly developing subdivision at the edge of the metropolitan area) and remain beyond the child's graduation. So after the twelfth year, the parent’s home will generate no new children, the bubble will have graduated from the schools in both A and B and the remaining schools will be at risk of closure. This is one point at which cooperative housing planning between the City, County and School District would aid in maintaining the capital investment the public has made in Schools A and B. Meanwhile, nobody will move into Neighborhood C except low income and subsidized renters. The students in School C turnover 120% throughout the school year as their parents move from place to place avoiding rent. And the city is participating in an affordable housing program in Neighborhood D that will strain enrollment at already existing school facilities.
Summary of Planning Efforts
There are a number of disparate planning activities which, when reviewed separately, are good for the community. But when implemented concurrently, these policies have the potential for generating the capital need for a new school and straining the operational capacity of existing schools. And, as demonstrated earlier, a new school is every mother's American dream. The new school has the potential to create suburban sprawl and contribute to the deterioration of existing schools. The following recommendations are designed to manage the sprawl/school/sprawl cycle that occurs as a result of disparate planning efforts.
“The author makes a very valid point that downtown revitalization is dependent upon exemplary schools that students, faculty, and staff can walk to and live by. Maintaining existing residential areas around inner city schools is critical. This paper is a great summary of actions that have a strong school/neighborhood focus. This is a very challenging subject. I appreciated the clear principles the paper proposes for moving forward.”
—Philip Enquist, jury (Chair)
In the past eight years, APS has been pushed by land use decisions of City and County planning agencies to build one new school a year. The land use decisions grossly impact demographic patterns and the APS long range capital program. APS enrollment has decreased from a peak of 94,000 students in 1994 to 84,000 in 2000. APS acreage has increased at least ten acres per year. Facilities square footage has increased over half a million square feet. All total, APS has identified over $1 billion dollars worth of building improvements in existing facilities. [3]
Because there is a lack of concurrent planning among jurisdictions and even a staging plan for all the raw land parcels, it is possible that all dozen or so master planned communities could receive approval and develop simultaneously. In an effort to manage these incongruous planning and development activities, I have identified several recommendations:
1) Concurrent Planning and Implementation of Community Facilities
First and foremost, a State mandate should require concurrent planning and capital financing between APS, the City and the County. The Comp Plan must identify and adopt goals that specify the performance and livability of individual communities. There are opportunities in Rank Two and Three Planning processes as well. The efforts must come from all directions—APS and the City and County. In addition to the City and County asking what school facilities can be used by the community, APS must ask what services can be offered to the community: access to school health care clinics, libraries, transportation, classrooms, the cafeteria, child care, space for senior care, gymnasiums, computer labs, social services.
2) Plan for People
Plan communities and schools so that students, teachers, parents and support staff have a reasonable opportunity to walk to school, live, work, and move around their community school. Planning typically starts with the needs of cars rather than people. A portion of APS high school students drive cars; one fifth of the metropolitan community, however, is driving to or from a school. Zoning ordinances need a major overhaul and an amended philosophy: Leave the “park once” part out and adjust the zoning code to provide for “walk to multiple destinations during the course of a day.”
3) City-County Merger
APS must be at the table during the merger discussions between the City. and the County. [4] APS does not share exact boundaries with the City and County. There are numerous examples of how inter-jurisdictional decisions affect APS. After-school-programs, for example, are funded inequitably for schools in the City of Albuquerque limits and schools in the unincorporated County limits. A planned community in Bernalillo County, Campbell Ranch, goes beyond APS boundaries into Sandoval County. Further, the State of New Mexico open enrollment law allows students outside the APS boundary to attend APS schools.
4) Sustainability, Re-investment or Just Say No
Amend APS Board policy to provide that 95% of all school capital tax funds be used to sustain and re-invest in existing schools. Simultaneously, amend State, APS, City and County policies to provide that costs and benefits of school and community facilities improvements and operations are planning concurrently. Evaluate just saying no to new schools until all existing schools have buildings which are equitable to the state-of-the-art new schools. A 100% reinvestment can go a long way to ensure that these schools are the hubs of our communities.
5) Community Partnerships
Formally identify the role schools play in the urban fabric of the built community. Joint powers agreement exists between the district and other jurisdictions; however, the agreements address only hourly use of APS facilities for programs. The agreement does not address the Comp Plan goal of “links between the school district and the City/County.” Choose one area in each school to start, say libraries, concurrent planning and follow these projects from capital funding, through to design, construction and operation.
6) Staging Raw Land Developments
Adopt a staging plan for the future growth of the metropolitan area. Create barriers to mass grading and single-use development. Allow smaller raw land portions to develop while holding in massive land parcels in reserve. Otherwise, APS will continue to build new schools and will continue to be the inadvertent marketing tool for new developments.
7) School Districts Receive Impact Fees
Amend State impact fees legislation to exempt schools from impact fees—at the least. A better solution would change the State legislative definition of infrastructure to include schools. Such an amendment will allow developers to pay a shared cost for the land, design and construction of any new school resulting from the new development—along with new roads, water systems, drainage improvements, parks, and open space.
8) Housing
Maintain a balance of owner-occupied residences and family rental homes throughout the school district. Site the mix of housing near schools that are well under capacity and at risk of closure—emphasizing owner-occupancy in these 18 at-risk areas. Do not site additional housing near schools where enrollment is near or over capacity.
Final Comment on Recommendations
In reality, the communities in the City and County are very committed to public education and to the students who live and learn in the geographical area that makes up Albuquerque Public Schools. It will take enormous political effort, however, to accomplish the above recommendations. It is unlikely, in a “property-rights” state like New Mexico, that much will change in the way multiple jurisdictions plan unless there is change in our planning statutes at the state level.
In draft investigation of state planning statutes, Lora Lucero (January 3, 2000, page 6) indicates that “the challenge will be to create a statutory framework that provides an effective mechanism for our communities to coordinate land use planning and decision-making with school districts, utilities and other special districts.” In her work, Lucero refers to consistency doctrine or the relationship between departments of a single agency, a relationship between local, regional, and state plans as well as those of neighboring communities. I concur that this is where the challenge is regarding land-use and living, working, moving, and meeting within our communities—each of which should have a school at the hub.
[1] In my six-year tenure at APS, there have been at least two lawsuits filed by disgruntled new homeowners against realtors who were accused of falsely representing school boundaries.
[2] The four urban centers are Uptown, the University area, Downtown, and Cottonwood Mall area. These centers were designated in the original 1975 City of Albuquerque/Bernalillo County Comprehensive Plan. Recent working drafts of an update have identified five more major activity centers. The Center and Corridors Study Area, January 1, 2000, names North 1-25, Journal Center, Renaissance Center, Sandia/Kirtland, and Sunport/Airport.
[3] APS Facilities Master Plan, 2001—05 Capital Strategy, adopted by the APS Board of Education, November 17, 1999, Architectural Research Consultants, Incorporated, page 6.
[4] The State of New Mexico has authorized Bernalillo County the authority to home rule. Home rule opens the possibility of a merger of Bernalillo County and the City of Albuquerque governments and, therefore, planning agencies. Although this concept has not been discussed at length in this paper, it is important to note—while all APS schools are in Bernalillo County—roughly ten percent of the schools are not in Albuquerque. Consequently, APS must respond and plan with at least two agencies.
Angela Robbins
University of New Mexico
School of Architecture + Planning
was born in Roswell, NM, and moved to Albuquerque when she was four years old. She graduated from the University of New Mexico with a Bachelor of Architecture and Master of Community and Regional Planning. The BioPark, Albuquerque Aquarium, Montano Bridge, and Casa San Ysidro History Museum were examples of successful projects during her tenure on the Albuquerque City Council between 1993 and 1997. She was a progressive City Council Member and advocated for managed growth of our city and substance abuse programs. Angela Robbins died in 2022.
