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The former Corrales Elementary School is in the future.
The campus, now known as Corrales K-8, Thursday began the 2025-2026 school year with its first-ever eighth-graders, completing a three-year transition to a K-8 school.
Between the expansion and a higher-than-expected number of new kindergartners, Principal Alvaro Ramazzini said, enrollment at Corrales K-8 was just over 400 as of last week, up about 20 students from last year.
“We’re not bursting at the seams, but we’re at capacity,” Ramazzini said. “Every classroom is being utilized.”
Ramazzini said the morning drop-off went smoothly, despite a relocation of the bus arrival area from the north to the south side of the campus.
He said he hopes the presence of the middle school grades encourages more parents to keep their children in the local school, rather than send them to another district or a private or charter school. Kids in Corrales had been split between Taylor Middle School, near Los Ranchos or Rio Rancho Public Schools.
Ramazzini took over at the school this spring after heading up Alamosa Elementary School in the South Valley.
He said Corrales K-8 is the right challenge for him after leading a turnaround at Alamosa that saw the school move from a Comprehensive Support and Improvement program to being a traditional school in good standing with the New Mexico Public Education Department.
Ramazzini said his team got test scores up and improved proficiency in multiple subjects.
“I always wanted a K-8 school,” Ramazzini told the Corrales Comment. “A principal friend told me ‘it’s time for you to move on to something new.’”
Ramazzini said his goal in his new post is to move Corrales K-8 from a traditional school to a Spotlight school — a designation state authorities reserve for the top quarter of schools, based on several measures of academic performance.
Next school year, he said, the school will move to a new campus adjacent to its current home; the existing school site will then be replaced with two gymnasiums and an athletic field with a track.
Phases 1 and 2 of the project, consisting of main classroom blocks and related infrastructure, are scheduled to be done in fall 2026. Phases 3 and 4 – the gym, art and music rooms, and the cafeteria, along with demolition of the old school – will be done in fall 2027.
Albuquerque Public Schools has invested more than $56 million in the new campus.