When the Pearson family moved to Ventana Ranch in 1998, they looked forward to watching an elementary school sprout in a vacant lot a block and a half away from their house.

They looked forward. And they looked forward some more. Their three children moved on to middle school and high school.

By 2004, when a campus of portable buildings was installed on the lot, it was too late.

"We thought our school would be up in a couple of years," groaned Donna Pearson, a real estate agent who sold Ventana Ranch homes to nearly 300 families like hers.

The wait won't be so long, school officials vow, for the next wave of new residents, but it's a major challenge for the district. By 2025, the Albuquerque Public Schools district could have 57 new schools, based on population projections for developments that are already mapped out.

District officials say a combination of new fees, new laws and a new commitment to work with developers should help them match the growth curve.

"We'll keep up," said Kizito Wijenje, director of the district's master plan. "We have to plan for schools for people who aren't even here. It's hard, but it's also to everybody's benefit to look ahead."

Wijenje said newcomers with children "are going to cause disruption for everybody and we can't stop them from coming.

"But we can anticipate and put the schools in much earlier."

New respect

For years, West Side residents have criticized the school district for not keeping up with West Side growth, but that's changing.

After averaging about one new school a year for a number of years, the district plans to open a record six in 2009, Wijenje said.

Volcano Vista High School in the northwest opened for freshmen this fall. A new southwest high school will open for freshmen next year.

"For the first time, they are thinking and planning before the homes are built," said Laura Horton, president of the Ventana Ranch Homeowners Association.

"Everyone had to wait (for new schools) until now," she said.

The reasons the school system didn't keep up with growth were political and short-sighted, Horton said.

"Part of it was attitude: anti-growth. But those people are gone now" from the district leadership, she said.

Albuquerque Board of Education member Robert Lucero, who has pushed for new West Side schools, agreed with Horton.

"The old regime at the district hampered the process," Lucero said.

The new leadership under Superintendent Beth Everitt and Brad Winter, executive director of facilities and planning, has welcomed support from developers and builders. They were also successful in getting a property-tax hike to help build new schools faster.

"We didn't have the will, or the money," Wijenje said of the past.

Bob Murphy, the Ventana Ranch developer, was a leader in a new cooperative effort to build schools faster.

Murphy shared the Pearsons' pain in Ventana Ranch.

He tried and failed to get an agreement with the school district to build the Ventana Ranch elementary school by the time 500 homes were sold.

"I still don't understand why they waited," he said.

Murphy said the district bought the Ventana school site from him and sat on it while the neighborhood grew, with hundreds of children bused to Sierra Vista Elementary.

Donna Pearson's children rode those buses instead of walking the six minutes to a neighborhood school that was still an empty lot.

"We had a site," Pearson said, "but it was eight years before we got a school."

She blames the school district and so does her son Zach, 16.

"APS sucks. That's all I've got to say," he said. "They need to figure out what they are doing. . . . They need to build schools faster and figure out how to build them big enough."

The district put up a portable elementary school for the 2004-05 school year in Ventana Ranch. Two years later, permanent buildings were in place.

Even the portable school was too late for the Pearsons. And, it was too small for the neighborhood.

"The district had blinders on," Pearson said.

Built for 700 students, Ventana Ranch Elementary was crowded when it opened with 1,100 kids.

Today's projections put Ventana Ranch Elementary enrollment at 1,500 by next school year - but help is on the way. The first of two reliever schools for Ventana Ranch will open in January 2009.

"We're building now at break-neck speed," Wijenje said.

Developers at the table

With the experience of Ventana Ranch behind him, developer Murphy decided he would have to do more to get schools for his planned Quail Ranch community on the border with Rio Rancho.

So he offered to donate land and infrastructure for schools, something the Albuquerque Board of Education accepted.

Quail Ranch has since stalled for lack of water, but Murphy's agreement could be a blueprint for other developers, district officials say.

And it's not the only example of cooperation.

In some cases developers are building schools in their new neighborhoods at their own expense and on their own land so they can sell homes faster.

School districts no longer have to front millions of dollars in property tax money and state funds required to buy land and build the schools.

Under a state law passed in 2007, districts can lease-purchase a school built by a developer and pay off the school over time, just like a mortgage.

Or, the school district can buy the school outright from the developer after it raises the funds and the school is 75 percent occupied.

A school must be built to state construction standards for a district to acquire it from a developer.

State Sen. Cynthia Nava, a Las Cruces Democrat and chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee, was a proponent of the lease-purchase measure, which likely will be put to use for the first time with Gadsden Public Schools, where she is deputy superintendent.

"This is good for us to alleviate overcrowding," she said. "All of the schools around these new developments are overpacked. So it makes sense for the developers to build a school as they are building their houses."

Gadsden developer Jack Darnall plans to open an elementary school in the fall of 2009 in the new Santa Teresa development adjacent to Sunland Park.

"Other developers will have to do what they need to do," said Darnall. "But we needed to solve this school issue first. We're going to jump-start things so there's no question about where the kids will go to school."

Santa Teresa, with 25 schools in its master plan of 22,000 homes, will double the number of schools in the Gadsden district, Nava said.

Thanks to the Legislature and developers like Darnall, "no public costs will be incurred until the schools are 75 percent full" of students, Nava said.

"I think the business community has set a really high bar," she said. "This is a windfall for us."

There's also a new model for paying for schools in the Albuquerque area.

Facility fees, about $3,000 per new house, are collected by the district before city building permits are issued. Started last year after an agreement with builders, the fees help offset school construction costs by 20 percent.

The school district is pursuing the same arrangement with the county, Wijenje said.

"If we maintain our current rate of taxation and get the facility fees extended in the county, I think we'll keep up with the growth," he said.

Big players still on the fence

Two very, very big question marks still remain when it comes to growth and schools: Mesa del Sol and SunCal.

Each of the two massive planned communities - SunCal on the West Side and Mesa del Sol on the southeast side - dwarfs previous developments in Albuquerque.

Neither developer has put anything in writing, as Murphy did, about how it intends to help meet the demand for schools, Wijenje said.

"They are wishy-washy on school sites, and they are refusing to make any kind of commitment," Wijenje said.

About 42,175 new Albuquerque Public Schools students are projected by 2025. Currently, the enrollment is 87,000.

School district officials project Mesa del Sol and its developer, Forest City Covington, will need five schools by 2020 for its first 12,000 homes.

Mesa del Sol's master plan has 17 sites reserved for K-12 schools and two sites for college.

The first Mesa Del Sol homes could be occupied by summer 2009.

"Mindful of how demand for classrooms on the West Side has resulted in overflowing classes, anxiety about school enrollment and less than optimal learning conditions, Forest City Covington is working on a plan to have Mesa del Sols' first elementary school built within the next four years," according to the developer's master plan.

There's no doubt Mesa del Sol and SunCal want the best schools the district can provide, but they haven't released details of their plans.

SunCal's development plans are still very preliminary. The company is negotiating with the school district, company spokesman Joe Aguirre said, "but it's too early to discuss details."

Wijenje said SunCal representatives have told him they are willing to pay facilities fees, but whether they will donate land is still a question.

At a public hearing earlier this year, SunCal representatives were mum to Wijenje's question "Will you give us land?"

Mesa del Sol's education plan is confidential and still being developed. "Nothing is completed to date," said Mesa del Sol spokeswoman Ann Monson.

However, the developer "will commit to donating the land for public schools and extending infrastructure to the sites," Monson said.

"Any additional developer contributions will be negotiated as part of an overall agreement with the public school district and will reflect the level of the school district's participation at Mesa del Sol," she said.

Charter schools are the preferred option for Mesa del Sol, based on a sister development in Denver.

The Albuquerque Public Schools projected timetable for new school construction has the first Mesa del Sol elementary school scheduled to open August 2011.

Until then, district officials have told Mesa del Sol developers that students will be bused to Lowell Elementary, Washington Middle School and Albuquerque High.

Wijenje said Mesa del Sol has rejected those schools as "totally unacceptable and not good enough" and suggested charter schools as an alternative.

"We've said, `Good luck,' " Wijenje said. "Maybe they'll teach us something."

Mesa del Sol has hired education consultants Richard Romero and Sue Griffith, former Albuquerque Public Schools administrators, to help them get the schools they want.

"We're going to be here in Albuquerque for 50 to 100 years. We know we have to have good schools to sell houses and recruit business," said Harold Baker, senior vice president for Forest City-Stapleton and a Mesa del Sol consultant.

"We either have good schools or we don't do the development," he said. "Good schools are an economic advantage for us."