Explore Academy Las Cruces - EdTribune NM - New Mexico Education Data

Explore Academy Grew 612% in a Decade. Then 2026 Happened.

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Explore Academy^↗ opened in 2014 with a narrow pitch: a high school in Albuquerque where students pick short themed seminars instead of following a fixed course sequence. It enrolled 199 students in the first year the state data covers. A decade later, the flagship campus has 1,418 students, a K-12 grade span, an "A" rating from the Public Education Department, and a 612.6% enrollment increase without a single year of decline. Only three other entities in New Mexico can claim an unbroken growth streak of eight or more years.

The growth story gets more complicated when the lens widens. Explore now operates three campuses across the state: Albuquerque, Las Cruces^↗ (opened 2022), and Rio Rancho^↗ (opened 2023). As a network, it peaked at 2,442 students in 2025. In 2026, the combined enrollment fell to 2,318, a 5.1% decline and the network's first contraction.

A flagship that keeps climbing

The Albuquerque campus has defied every statewide trend. While Albuquerque Public Schools^↗ lost 19,579 students over the same period, a 21.2% decline, Explore ABQ added 1,219. The charter now enrolls 1.95% of APS's total headcount, up from 0.22% in 2016.

The trajectory has two distinct phases. From 2016 to 2018, growth was modest: 13 students, then 46. In 2019, the campus nearly doubled, jumping from 258 to 441. That acceleration continued through the pandemic, when many traditional districts were losing students in droves. Between 2021 and 2022 alone, the ABQ campus gained 380 students, a 58.8% single-year surge. The gains have tapered since then: 178 in 2023, 120 in 2024, 89 in 2025, and just five in 2026. The flagship may be approaching a plateau.

The original campus served grades 9 through 11. By 2024, it had expanded to K-12, with a dedicated elementary campus at Journal Center now listed for sale at $10.95 million. Head administrator Jacob Kolander confirmed expansion plans but said "nothing has been finalized."

The network's uneven geography

The expansion beyond Albuquerque has produced mixed results.

The Las Cruces campus opened in 2022 with 94 students and grew rapidly, reaching 599 by 2025. Then it shed 174 students in a single year, dropping 29.0% to 425 in 2026. The campus is currently undergoing charter renewal review by the Public Education Department. Las Cruces Public Schools^↗, the traditional district in that market, also declined, losing 2,809 students since 2016 to reach 22,156.

The Rio Rancho campus opened in August 2023, converting a former Concentrix call center into a K-6 school with class sizes capped at 14 to 16 students. It enrolled 273 students in its first full year and has grown to 475 in 2026, a 74.0% increase. Rio Rancho Public Schools^↗, its host district, has lost 667 students since 2016 and now enrolls 16,245.

The stacked area chart makes the 2026 contraction visible: the Las Cruces wedge shrinks sharply while the Albuquerque base barely moves. The network's growth over the past four years was primarily driven by new campus openings, not by organic expansion of the flagship.

The 2026 reversal in context

The network's first decline does not appear to be an Explore-specific phenomenon. Mission Achievement and Success, New Mexico's largest charter entity at 1,898 students, lost 338 students in 2026, a 15.1% drop. The charter sector as a whole contracted for the first time in the data, falling from 22,242 to 21,734 students while its share of total enrollment held steady at 7.3%.

One possible driver is the maturation of pandemic-era enrollment shifts. Several charters that grew rapidly during 2020-2022, when families sought alternatives to closed or remote traditional schools, may be experiencing a reversion as those students graduate or return to traditional districts. The Las Cruces campus's 29% single-year decline is harder to explain by maturation alone. It may reflect growing pains specific to a young campus still building community roots in a smaller market than Albuquerque.

Where Explore fits in the charter landscape

Even after the 2026 decline, the Explore network accounts for 10.7% of all charter enrollment in New Mexico. The ABQ campus alone is the state's fourth-largest charter entity.

The top tier of New Mexico charters is dominated by brick-and-mortar schools with distinctive instructional models. Mission Achievement and Success (1,898) runs extended-day schedules. Pecos Cyber Academy (1,616) and NM Connections Academy (1,508) are virtual. Explore's "flavored" curriculum, where students choose themed seminars that rotate every six weeks, occupies a niche between traditional instruction and online learning.

Since 2019, Explore ABQ has added more students in absolute terms (+977) than any other charter entity in the state. Hozho Academy (+729, a 592.7% increase) and ABQ School of Excellence (+415) are the next-largest growers.

A demographic profile unlike the state

Explore Academy's student body does not mirror New Mexico. In 2019, when the network was a single Albuquerque campus, 51.0% of students were white and 37.0% were Hispanic. By 2026, that had shifted: 33.9% white, 56.0% Hispanic. The network's demographics have moved toward the state average but remain significantly whiter. New Mexico's public school enrollment is 64.6% Hispanic and 19.6% white.

The demographic gap was a central concern when Explore attempted to open a Santa Fe campus in 2023. The Public Education Department's Charter Schools Division noted that the application projected 30% white students, double the 15% rate at Santa Fe Public Schools, and questioned the school's decision not to offer bilingual instruction. The application was withdrawn before a final vote. A new notice of intent for a Santa Fe campus was filed with the Public Education Commission in late 2024.

Separately, the network's special education enrollment has grown faster than total enrollment. In 2019, 9.3% of Explore students received special education services (41 of 441). By 2026, that rate was 15.7% (365 of 2,318), closer to the statewide rate and a sign that the school is serving a broader cross-section of student needs than in its early years.

What 2027 will test

The question facing Explore Academy is whether its model can sustain itself at scale across multiple markets. The ABQ flagship gained just five students in 2026. The K-5 campus is for sale. Las Cruces lost nearly a third of its enrollment. Rio Rancho is still growing, but from a small base and with a grade span that has not yet reached middle school age.

The network has also signaled ambitions beyond New Mexico. Explore Academy campuses now operate in Las Vegas and Peoria, Arizona, making it a multi-state charter operator. Whether the New Mexico network can hold 2,300 students while the organization's attention spreads across state lines will be the enrollment story to watch in 2027.

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Charter Growth Stalls After Seven-Year Run

Thu, 29 Jan 2026 12:00:00 GMT

For seven consecutive years, New Mexico's charter sector grew while traditional districts shrank. In 2025-26, that streak ended. Charter enrollment fell by 508 students, a 2.3% decline, the first contraction in the data going back to 2019. The drop is modest in absolute terms, but it breaks a pattern that had nearly doubled the sector since the pandemic began: from 13,534 students in 2019 to a peak of 22,242 in 2025.

The reversal does not mean charters and traditional districts now face the same pressures. Traditional enrollment fell by 7,825 students in the same year, 2.8% of its base. Charters still account for just 6.1% of the state's total enrollment decline. But the sector's immunity to the demographic forces draining New Mexico's schools, which lose roughly 4,000 to 8,000 students per year, appears to have expired.

Two schools, half the story

The contraction is not a sector-wide phenomenon. It is concentrated in two charter networks whose losses account for the bulk of the decline.

Mission Achievement and Success^↗, the state's largest charter operator with campuses in Albuquerque, dropped from 2,236 students to 1,898, a loss of 338 students (15.1%). That single operator accounts for two-thirds of the sector's net decline. MAS had been on a growth trajectory since 2019, when it enrolled 1,167 students, more than tripling its 2024 count by adding campuses and grade levels. Its 2026 contraction reversed three years of gains in a single year.

Explore Academy Las Cruces^↗ lost 174 students (29.0%), falling from 599 to 425. The Las Cruces campus closed its high school in June 2025 after just two years of operation, consolidating to a K-8 model. The school's board voted 5-0 to shut the high school division after facing a projected $659,000 deficit, with the alternative being full closure by December 2025, according to the Las Cruces Bulletin.

Together, MAS and Explore Academy Las Cruces account for 512 of the sector's 508-student net decline. Absent those two, the remaining 53 charters in both years essentially broke even.

The funding formula factor

New Mexico's 2025 funding formula overhaul, HB 63, restructured how charter schools receive at-risk student funding. The bill tied state support to each charter's own enrollment of economically disadvantaged students and English learners, rather than to the rate of the local district where the charter operates.

For charters serving high concentrations of at-risk students, this was a windfall. MAS was initially projected to receive nearly $2 million more, the Santa Fe New Mexican reported, though actual gains were smaller because enrollment came in below projections. For charters serving fewer at-risk students, the formula shift hit hard. Explore Academy's Albuquerque flagship lost just over $2 million of a $19.7 million operating budget; its Las Cruces campus lost $1.5 million from a $9 million budget, most of it attributable to the enrollment shortfall that precipitated the high school closure.

The formula change created a structural incentive for charters to enroll at-risk populations, and a structural penalty for those that do not. Whether this contributed to the enrollment shifts visible in the data is difficult to disentangle from the demographic headwinds affecting all New Mexico schools.

A reclassification, not a closure

One charter school that appears to have "vanished" from the 2026 charter rolls is the Albuquerque Institute of Math and Science (AIMS), which enrolled 311 students as a state-chartered school in 2025. AIMS does not appear in the 2026 charter data. However, the school continues to operate: it shows up in 2026 enrollment records as a campus under Albuquerque Public Schools with 324 students, and it announced a new campus partnership with Central New Mexico Community College in 2025. The school was reclassified from charter to district authorization, not closed. This reclassification accounts for roughly 311 of the 508-student raw decline. Adjusting for it, the organic enrollment loss across charters that remained in the sector was approximately 197 students.

Brick-and-mortar charters contract; virtual charters do not

The decline is entirely a brick-and-mortar phenomenon. New Mexico's two virtual charter operators, Pecos Cyber Academy and New Mexico Connections Academy, together enrolled 3,124 students in 2026, up 68 from the prior year. Virtual charters now account for 14.4% of all charter enrollment, up from 7.6% in 2019.

Brick-and-mortar charters, by contrast, fell from 19,186 to 18,610, a loss of 576 students. This tracks with the broader pattern visible in traditional districts: physical schools are losing students to a combination of declining birth cohorts, out-migration, and competition from virtual alternatives.

Growth that was already decelerating

The 2026 reversal did not arrive without warning. Charter growth rates had been slowing for three years: from +14.5% in 2023 to +9.3% in 2024 to +3.6% in 2025. The sector added 2,494 students in 2023 but only 775 in 2025. The curve was flattening well before it turned negative.

The number of charter entities also peaked. New Mexico had 58 charter districts in 2024 and 2025; it has 57 in 2026. The sector added 12 entities between 2019 and 2024, an average of more than two per year. In the last two years, none were added and one (AIMS) was reclassified out.

Losing students, gaining share

Despite losing students, charters' share of total public enrollment actually ticked up, from 7.25% to 7.28%. The math: traditional districts lost students faster (2.8%) than charters did (2.3%), so the charter slice of a shrinking pie grew marginally.

This is a pattern worth watching. A sector can lose students and gain market share simultaneously when the overall system is contracting. It means the charter share number alone is not a reliable indicator of sector health. The question is whether families are choosing charters at higher rates, or whether charters are simply declining more slowly than the districts they draw from.

Bright spots amid the contraction

Not all charters contracted. Solare Collegiate Charter School^↗ added 123 students, growing 39.2% from 314 to 437. Hozho Academy gained 71 students (9.1%). ABQ School of Excellence added 68 (6.8%). Cottonwood Classical Prep grew by 65 (7.6%). Twenty-five of the 55 charters present in both years gained enrollment.

These gains point to continued demand for certain charter models, particularly in Albuquerque's metro area. The growth, however, was not enough to offset the losses concentrated at the top.

A $52.8 million bet on expansion

The federal government awarded Public Charter Schools of New Mexico a $52.8 million Charter School Program grant in 2023 to fund 28 subgrants for new and expanding charters over five years. Executive Director Matt Pahl said the grant aims to generate 7,500 new seats, with priority for communities without existing charter options.

New Mexico is projected to see enrollment declines far exceeding the national average as birth cohorts shrink. The charter sector spent seven years growing against that current. In 2025-26, the current won. The $52.8 million grant will fund new seats. Whether families show up to fill them depends on forces no grant can control: how many children are born in New Mexico, how many families stay, and whether charters can keep growing in a state that keeps getting smaller.

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