A move is on to purchase a public school building in Silver City, which may then be converted for use by a local charter school.
Officials with the Aldo Leopold Charter School have several times expressed an interest in acquiring the one-story Jose Barrios Elementary School, which is located at 1625 Little Walnut Road.
The Silver Consolidated Schools district had earlier determined that the market value of the Barrios school is just over $2 million. That figure, said Will Tracy, director of the Aldo Leopold school, is too high to meet.
But in a meeting with the Silver City Consolidated Schools board of education, Tracy said he is seeking a reappraisal of the property, at which point “we will go back to our loan provider, see what maximum funds we can come up with, and then present a letter of intent for the acquisition of Jose Barrios as soon as possible.”
The Aldo Leopold Charter School serves students from grades 6 to 12. The facility is named in honor of the writer and conservationist Aldo Leopold, who emphasized both land and wildlife management in his teachings.
Leopold was particularly known in New Mexico for his work centering on the preservation of an entire wilderness area in the Gila National Forest in the southwest part of the state. As a tribute to his work, just over 202,000 acres in the forest in 1980 were officially designated as the Aldo Leopold Wilderness.
The charter school, with an emphasis on conservation and archaeology site stewardship, among other subjects, is currently located in the Ritch Hall building, a former dormitory on the campus of Western New Mexico University. It moved into that site in the summer of 2019.
Last summer the Consolidated Schools board voted to close the Jose Barrios school due to a lack of funding. Board members have since contemplated selling it to a public entity or a private individual or demolishing it altogether.
December 19, 2025
By Garry Boulard
