Los Lunas Board Scraps Pre-K Grant, Eyes Full Rebuild of Raymond Gabaldon Elementary

The Los Lunas Schools Board of Education has walked away from a four-year-old state grant rather than let it stand in the way of tearing down and rebuilding Raymond Gabaldon Elementary from the ground up.

At its regular January meeting, the board voted unanimously to rescind a long-standing state memorandum of understanding for a Public School Capital Outlay Council grant originally awarded in 2021 to fund a pre-K center at RGE. Superintendent Susan Chavez said the decision came down to math on the state's rebuilding priority list: holding onto the existing pre-K award, or simply expanding it, would block the school from ranking low enough to qualify for a full reconstruction project.

"What the PSCOC has decided is that we will need to rescind the award and start over for a new school for Raymond Gabaldon Elementary," Chavez said. She added that retaining the existing pre-K award, or simply adding to it, would prevent RGE from dropping low enough on the state's rebuilding priority list.

The path to this vote stretched over more than a year of failed workarounds. After a meeting in October 2024, Los Lunas Schools officials sat down with the PSCOC and the New Mexico Public School Finance Authority to map out every available option for the award. By December 2024, the board had announced a pause on all RGE plans while those conversations continued. In October 2025, the district tried a different angle, approving a language change to the existing grant that would have shifted its scope from a standalone pre-K center to a full rebuild project. The PSCOC rejected that modification, leaving rescission as the only remaining route.

The current RGE campus, which Chavez described as showing signs of age, would not be rehabilitated under the new direction. Instead, the district intends to file a fresh application for a brand-new school that incorporates a full pre-K center. That new campus may not rise on the same ground as the existing building. Officials are weighing a different location entirely because of potential school boundary conflicts created by RGE's proximity to Los Lunas Elementary.

The rescission clears the district's slate with the PSCOC and opens the application process for a new school designation, though no timeline for filing that application or breaking ground on a replacement campus has been publicly announced.