Shumla School receives $100,000 grant for student housing

January 6, 2007
By Bill Sontag
Feature Writer

Ground hasn’t even been broken on the next big thing at the Shumla School, but an impressive gift will soon spark a robust February jump-start. Now on target is much-needed overnight shelter on the 1,600-acre desert campus.

Just before Christmas, L. Michael Hajtman, president of the Albert and Ethel Herzstein Charitable Foundation in Houston sent a $100,000 check to Dr. Carolyn Boyd, Shumla School executive director. The gift enables workers to begin plans and scheduling work toward a modest, but important complex of dormitories and bungalows. The lodging will honor the memory of Bill and Nina Merle Rios, Del Rio residents, now deceased.

The rustic housing is designed for the comfort and safety of instructors and students. “These will be a huge improvement over the tents we’ve had to use until now,” Boyd said with a broad smile, Wednesday (Jan. 3), as planning began with Dominion Engineering contractors Gurvis Vernor and Thomas Springfield.

The growing campus, just off U.S. Highway 90 and about 20 miles west of Comstock, already has a spacious meeting pavilion with attached kitchen, laboratory and classroom. In 2006, another facility, “The Bookhouse,” was completed as a center for reference collections, library, conference room, and lodging for visiting scholars. The building is affectionately nicknamed “Mom’s Place,” in honor of Boyd’s mother, Jody Boyd, who passed away recently.

Soon, construction will begin on two dormitories, each sheltering 15 people, and four duplex-style bungalows, housing 16. These will be neither sumptuous nor sophisticated. “All we need is the most basic building,” Boyd advised Vernor and Springfield. “When you’re in the dorms and the bungalows, you want to feel like you’re inside … and outside.”

Boyd believes the new dorms and bungalows will attract more and broader audiences to the already-ambitious selection of program choices offered by Shumla School. For example, the Pecos River Kids Adventure Camps – typically six days and five nights in duration – include visits to Seminole Canyon State Historical Park, Judge Roy Bean Visitor Center at Langtry, and Amistad National Recreation Area.

Participants and instructors alike need good shelter and rest at the end of each day which also includes canoe and boat excursions, and examinations of the area’s abundance of archeological sites. As explained on the school’s Web site, “SHUMLA [Studying Human Use of Materials, Land and Art] instructors include archeologists, botanists, biologists, geologists, astronomers, artists and historians, as well as experts in a wide range of other areas, such as Native American lifeways and adventure challenge activities.”

Friday afternoon (Jan. 5), Boyd was thrilled to learn of the Del Rio connection, and the naming of the new facilities after the Rios family, requested by the Herzstein Foundation. The connection became clear when Houstonian Linda Rios Bromley, author of Freedom Flight (the life of a Taiwanese pilot of U-2 reconnaissance jets flown over China during the Cold War ), told LIVE! that Bill and Nina Merle Rios were her parents.

Rios knew nothing of the anticipated Shumla dedication in her parents’ name. Moved to tears, Rios explained that Ethel Herzstein was her aunt, and administrators of the philanthropic foundation bearing the Herzsteins’ name knew of the Del Rio connection, thus requesting the naming right with the gift.

Boyd believes Linda Rios Bromley’s anticipation will only grow as she learns more about the mission of Shumla School. Boyd’s sense of urgency about the need for the school’s bold schedule and curriculum for school children – mostly from Eagle Pass and Del Rio – was reinforced with recent results of the state’s Academic Excellence Indicator System (AEIS).

Shumla’s Pecos River Kids program targets fifth-graders from elementary schools in the region, in hopes that the age group is most receptive to the life lessons afforded by the unique curriculum. Friday Boyd said the AEIS report says 87.7 percent of Eagle Pass schoolchildren are “economically disadvantaged,” and 71 percent are classified as “at risk” of dropping out before graduation. In Del Rio, AEIS reported, 78.3 percent are “economically disadvantaged” and 50.3 percent are “at risk.”

“The border overall has the highest dropout rates in the state. This is of an emergency nature that must be addressed,” asserted Boyd, adding her hope that Shumla School can assist the effort. More than 2,350 schoolchildren were exposed to programs on the Shumla School campus in 2006.

Selina Elizondo-Jimenez, principal of Seco Mines Elementary School, surprised Boyd in November with a letter of thanks for the Pecos River Kids programs’ impact on her students and teachers. “The experiences my students have had at Shumla speak for themselves in terms of increasing student interest in Science, a 28-point gain in Science scores, and professional development for my teachers… The increase in our scores landed us the state’s coveted RECOGNIZED status.”

Moreover, safe, comfortable, on-site housing should satisfy some of the basic needs of future program participants – young and not-so-young – as the 2007 programs get underway. Considering an early May, 2007, projected construction completion date for the dorms and bungalows, Boyd believes the new housing will be available for a course entitled “Field Methods in Rock Art Studies.”

Vernor and Springfield are well acquainted with the cinderblock, stucco finish construction. They built the San Felipe Country Club, the data processing center for The Bank & Trust, and are now completing The Bank & Trust branch bank on the north end of the city.

“These guys have demonstrated such skill and talent that colored architectural drawings aren’t even needed. They know the site, and they know what works up there,” exclaimed Boyd.

For more information, see www.shumla.org. For information on Shumla's KEY curriculum, see this story.