Amanda Chavez, a Santa Fe city councilor and the new leader of The MASTERS Program, a state-chartered high school in Santa Fe, is shown in 2023.
By André Salkin asalkin@sfnewmexican.com
Jul 13, 2026
A high school could soon become the latest addition to the burgeoning midtown campus.
Amanda Chavez, a Santa Fe city councilor who was recently named head of the early college high school The MASTERS Program, has made it one of her first orders of business to establish a partnership with two major businesses developing the former college campus on St. Michael’s Drive. The plan is to bolster a workforce pipeline for students at the state-chartered high school, which is now housed at Santa Fe Community College.
“Our students deserve more than an education that prepares them for graduation — they deserve experiences that prepare them for life,” Chavez said in a statement, adding the partnership would “inspire students to discover their passions, develop professional skills and envision successful futures right here in New Mexico.”
The effort comes amid a wave of similar moves to merge curriculum with economic development, including Santa Fe Public Schools’ work-based learning program and a bill passed during this year’s legislative session creating a pilot program to pay companies to hire interns.
Through the new partnership, the school and two major developers at midtown — Aspect Media Village and the New Mexico Innovation Hub — will offer students dual credit, capstone projects and paid internship opportunities as those developers’ tenants grow. Chavez steps in at a tumultuous time for the school, which is grappling with a $3.3 million shortfall and 11 staff firings announced by leaders in May.
David Perez, the Innovation Hub’s CEO and founder, called the site “a center of gravity for our innovation economy.”
The school plans to use an $85,000 NextGen grant from the state Public Education Department for career technical education to cover overhead for the internships, Chavez said.
‘The community we’re building’
The city bought the 64-acre midtown site in 2009 after the College of Santa Fe closed. The Santa Fe University of Art and Design later took over the property, which shuttered in 2018 and kick-started a yearslong effort to redevelop the vacant campus in the center of town.
Aspect Media Village is developing 23 of the property’s 64 acres into a mixed-use campus with an eatery, a movie theater, film production studio, circus arts school Wise Fool New Mexico, and advanced magnets and power supply manufacturer Woodruff Engineering. A yoga studio, apartment complex and herbal medicine manufacturer are expected to open in coming months.
Perez’s Innovation Hub offers office, co-working and lab space along with business incubator services for tech and STEM startups, with an eye toward building an innovation economy in Santa Fe. Although it has already attracted 11 tenants, Santa Fe Community College was the hub’s first academic partner, Perez said, and is relocating its machinist training lab to the campus.
The MASTERS Program partnership fits, he said, because his tenants often complain of a lack of local talent to hire, “in many ways because these are new technologies that are being developed here.”
Among the tenants Perez is most eager for students to meet is Liberty Fusion, a fusion-energy company bringing in an instrument from Los Alamos National Laboratory called the Plasma Liner Experiment for fusion-based energy production research.
“Liberty Fusion is going to open the doors and show the kids this incredible one-of-a-kind machine,” he said.
“It’s just not the space and the buildings, it’s the community we’re building here,” Perez added. “What we’ve been missing here in New Mexico, in Santa Fe specifically, is a center of gravity for all these entities — the startups, the national labs, the universities, venture capital firms, entrepreneurs.”
Turbulent time
Chavez was among the councilors who voted unanimously March 26, 2025, to approve the sale or lease of eight parcels of the property as part of the city’s midtown master plan. The site also sits within her council district, and she was led to the idea of a partnership in part through a site visit when she was a councilor.
Chavez denied any conflict of interest between her role as head of school at The MASTERS Program and her vote on the master plan as a councilor, noting there are not yet plans to exchange money between the school and the developers.
“I don’t see how it’s a conflict of interest,” she said, arguing her goals as a school leader and educator — improving postsecondary success, proficiency rates and access to meaningful local work — align with her role on the council.
Still, she said, “there’s processes to follow to make sure that that conflict of interest, you know, isn’t a conflict.”
Chavez arrives amid a tumultuous stretch for both her and the school.
Earlier this year, the school’s leaders placed former Head of School Karla Haas Moskowitz on administrative leave and later announced her contract would not be renewed, saying her remote work arrangement wasn’t meeting the school’s needs. Haas Moskowitz’s daughter, speaking on her mother’s behalf, said she believed she’d been pushed out.
The school’s governing board also disclosed in spring a $3.3 million financial shortfall that had built up over years, which leaders blamed on dishonest and incomplete reporting by business manager Axiom Analytics. To stay afloat, the school fired 11 staff.
Chavez remains in active litigation against her former employer, Santa Fe Public Schools, where she had been an assistant high school principal. She went on administrative leave in late 2024 and later went public with allegations of sexual harassment against former Superintendent Hilario “Larry” Chavez.
Chavez sued the district, arguing it hadn’t done enough to investigate her claims. Jury selection in the case is set for November 2027.