RRPS at 30: Cleveland looks back on district's journey

What started out in a condemned building in 1994 has now become one of the top-rated school districts in the state of New Mexico.

As Rio Rancho Public Schools approaches its 30th anniversary July 1, Superintendent Sue Cleveland — whose tenure dates to the beginning of the district — reflected on the start of RRPS.

“We started with absolutely nothing. We were in an old building the city of Rio Rancho had condemned to build Unser Boulevard; they told us that we could work out of that building until the time they would tear it down for Unser,” she said of the first days.

There, they worked with a broken file cabinet, a map of the district hanging on the wall, and a loaned printer and computer. “It was truly starting over, but we did have schools that were operational,” Cleveland said.

Those schools were Enchanted Hills Elementary and the old Mountain View Middle School from Jemez Valley Public Schools and Lincoln Middle School, the old MLK Elementary, Rio Rancho Elementary, Puesta del Sol Elementary and the old Ernest Stapleton Elementary from Albuquerque Public Schools. Many of the classrooms at the time, Cleveland noted, were in portables and “we were frightfully overcrowded.

“We had seven schools, and if we had five more, they would have been crowded. That was the degree that we were facing in the terms of overcrowding.”

That led to the district’s first bond issue.

“One of our first goals we had was to just start some construction to alleviate that. I came Feb. 1. Our first bond issue election was April, so we only had two months to get the whole battle action ready, and this community just pulled together and made it happen,” Cleveland said. “So the next several years were just consumed with building new schools and building fast and getting classrooms for our kids.”

One July 1, RRPS officially began operations.

“We met at MLK, and our guest speakers were Bill Richardson and Alice King, first lady,” Cleveland said. “I remember the first day that first bust rolled that said ‘Rio Rancho Public Schools’ on it … there was not a dry eye in that group.

“Those people had worked, many of them 10 years before I ever saw, to get the school district created, and that was just such a visible symbol of it.”

The high schools

“When we were created — a lot of people don’t know this or don’t remember it — we were only an K-8 district, and that was because there was no hope of having a high school,” Cleveland said, noting that Rio Rancho students made up about three-fourths of Cibola High School at the time.

The reason there was no hop for a high school? All the money from the bond issue was already tied up in relieving crowding at the existing buildings. “Every penny was already gone,” Cleveland said. “We were looking at at least a decade, maybe more, before we could even think about a high school.

Then, Sandoval County Commissioner Joe Lang came up with a plan in regards to a negotiation with Intel for an industrial revenue bond, and things changed.

“The industrial revenue bond was negotiated, and we ended up with not only some money to build a high school but Intel’s willingness to build it for us because they could build it faster.

“They had just come off that huge expansion, and so they had all the crews just sitting there and so they just picked up their crews and the moved to the site of Rio Rancho High School. We saw the wall of that high school go up in a matter of days after the foundations were down,” Cleveland said. “That’s how we got a new high school in 1997, so it was a pretty quick turnaround from ’94 to ’97 to get that high school we thought we wouldn’t see for over a decade or maybe longer than that.”

Cleveland said that she though it was a situation where everybody came out winners: Intel got tax benefits and community got its first high school.

She said that was a turning point for the district because becoming a K-12 district. “People knew we were going to survive, and then we really began to focus our efforts on building school facilities and developing a strong instructional program.

“From that point on, it was build the facilities, create the program, get your own identity as a community,” Cleveland said.

“We had a huge turnout when we opened Rio Rancho High. We had senators there, we had the governor there, we had national delegation representation there and the whole community, I think, turned out for it … It was just a real prideful kind of thing for the community: It was our name, it was our community and that was our kids.”

Then, more quickly than she imagined it would happened, a second high school was needed as the student population at Rio Rancho High School topped 3,300.

"I wish we wouldn't have had to have a second high school so soon, because I think it really benefitted the community to have that one, but in the terms of kids ... it was the right decision to make; it was just kind of fun to be a one-horse town," Cleveland said.

"We had a lot of hurdles building a second high school, and the city was very instrumental in helping us get infrastructure to that site for the second high school," she continued, also noting that then-Gov. Bill Richardson helped secure $50 million to finish Cleveland High School. "We had a lot of state help with that second high school; we couldn't have managed without their help."

One thing Cleveland prides herself on is attending all the high school graduation ceremonies the district hosts. She has seen every graduate of RRPS walk across the stage to receive their diploma.

"Every one of those students is a symbol of our success and the success of that student, and so it means that we were able to get that student through to an important milestone in their life," she said. "Conversely, every dropout is a failure, so we work very hard to maintain a high graduation rate. ... We're very proud we have a high graduation rate, and I'm very proud of the last several years, especially during the pandemic, that it did not drop much. Our staff had to really put out the effort to get those kids across the line, and they did a good job with it."

What's ahead

Rio Rancho Public Schools isn't done building yet.

Currently, the Career-Technical Education Campus (CTE) dubbed Rio TECH, is set to come online for the 2025-26 school year.

The campus will be located on Zenith Road with the building currently undergoing renovations. The program will train students in skilled trades such as plumbing, welding, electrician work and pipe fitting as well as technology pathways. In a partnership with CNM, automotive technology will also be coming onboard in the near future for RRPS.

One thing Cleveland sees for the future is a similar program being developed for health professions, such as a professional track for those interested in areas such as nursing, doctors or physical therapy and a technical track for areas such as radiology or other specialized areas. That location, she imagines, would be somewhere near the hospitals to make it convenient for training.

"But that's future planning," Cleveland said. "Maybe, it might even be part of, someday, of a third high school."

However, that's something else that is a long way down the road. "Unless something unique comes up, it's years and years away from being able to open just because of the limited bonding capacity that we have, and we are always forced to take care of what we have. ... It's just going to take a lot of money to build a new high school.

"We do have the land for the third high school. We paid for it; we have it," Cleveland said. "It's just going to take a long time to be able to get together enough money to build that high school. High schools are frightfully expensive."

She even sees the possibility of it breaking away from the traditional high school model. "It might be a high school that would have maybe three small schools in one and might have something like health professions or aerospace or maybe some themed schools ... that will be somebody else's decision," Cleveland said. "And the community might, at some point, look very differently about that."

Tenure and success

With Rio Rancho Public Schools often being touted as one of the best school districts in the state, Cleveland continues to point that success back to partnerships, people and the community.

"I just can't say enough about good community, good partnerships, trying to find a way to just make things happen," Cleveland said. "We had and we have, over the years, a phenomenal team of people. They just worked hard. It was the district team: it was teachers, it was our administrators, it was all of our support personnel. With a good team, you can do anything. We have been blessed with really good people. ... That's how we made it work was the quality of our people.

"I'm just so grateful for all the people that have made the district work in the face of considerable challenges over the years," she said. "I think that the community itself should be commended for much of the success that we have had.

"You can get things done with the limited resources we have in the state," Cleveland noted. "We have to partner to get things done, and so we've been able to partner with the city on some things and the county on some things and we're trying to partner right now with CNM to maximize funding for career-technical education. It's a sense of trying to work together to maximize people's taxes and resources to be able to do the things that we've done, so I think partnerships have just been critical."

She also noted that there was a sense from the beginnings of a district that there were high expectations from the community for them, including high expectations of behavior, academic performance and the ability to achieve a well-rounded education, which the highly successful athletic and fine arts programs contribute to.

Cleveland is also in the unique position of being the only superintendent the district has ever seen, and though she's had opportunity to go elsewhere, she chose to stay in Rio Rancho.

"I think it was always a sense that we were creating something good, and not just the school district but in the community, and so I think it was a sense of attachment to this community and to our staff and our students," she said. "This is just where I wanted to be. ... I wanted my children to go through school and have that stability and also be part of the community. ... I still believe this is a good community to live and learn in.

"It was a wonderful opportunity, and starting a school district is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but you don't want to do it more than once in a lifetime."