ZUNI PUEBLO, N.M. – Housing units designed for teachers to alleviate a teacher shortage on a Native American pueblo in western New Mexico are posing hazards and are in dire need of repairs.
The teacher houses on Zuni Pueblo have poor foundations, lack erosion-control mechanisms and need updated pipes, the Gallup Independent reports.
The Zuni Public School District has a total of 86 homes for teachers in its inventory. These homes include 36 houses built north of Zuni High School in 2002 by an Albuquerque company that installed overhead plumbing with little to no insulation. The structures were built without taking into consideration Zuni Pueblo’s particular needs and location, said Jarvis Chopito, the Zuni Public School District maintenance supervisor.
“When we build our houses here in Zuni, we bury our water lines,” he said. “When they built the houses here, they were probably thinking of Albuquerque weather – or Florida. We don’t know what happened.”
Zuni Pueblo has two other locations where teachers can rent affordable homes from the district, but these homes are in worse shape. They were built between the 1950s and 1970s, and they are outdated, posing significant hazards and liabilities because of asbestos, electrical problems, foundation issues and poor insulation, said Mark Archuleta, support services director for the school district.
Over the years, the school district has been spending significant money and resources to stabilize, insulate and maintain these homes to continue providing affordable housing for outside teachers and administrators who come to work at Zuni.
“We need to be able to offer affordable, safe and adequate housing to attract teachers to our pueblo,” said Jerome Haskie, a school board member who toured the teacher housing at Zuni last week.
For some time, Haskie and the rest of the board, along with school district administrators and the Zuni Tribal Council, have urged the state of New Mexico to amend provisions of funding distributions so that the school district can access its fair share of federal impact aid funds and use the money to upgrade facilities, create new programs and improve overall education at Zuni.
“If we did get 100% of our money, we could do a comprehensive plan for our teachers here so that we can develop a village here where kids have access to teachers outside of school,” Haskie said.
After a recent assessment conducted on the teacher homes, the district concluded that only 36 are in decent shape and can continue to house teachers, and they are all part of the batch built in 2002.
School district Director of Finance Martin Romine said the 36 homes built in 2002 were built mainly with the district’s operational funds for $10 million.
School districts around New Mexico are experiencing a teacher shortage. Housing remains an issue around towns and cities.
