A project several years in the making is now in motion to convert a historic school in northern New Mexico into a high tech film and technology training center.
The 1936 art deco style brick building near downtown Raton known as the Kearney School needs more than $2 million in major repairs including foundation, drainage and roof work.
Ann Theis leads El Raton Media Works, a nonprofit partner in the project. She said the plan has support from the community, New Mexico state and federal agencies.
“There's not a lot of other industry here,” Theis said. "That's what we're really trying to grow, trying to bring by offering this kind of technical training, trying to attract film productions here, but also other high tech industry.”
Raton City Manager Rick Mestas said new educational and job opportunities could help stem what he called the region’s “rural brain drain.”
“When kids graduate from high school,” he said, “the schools prepare them to go off to college. Usually these kids don't come back to the small rural communities.”
Mestas said Raton is well situated to attract both students and filmmakers from around the state, as well as Southern Colorado and Northern Texas. New Mexico already attracts dozens of productions each year.
Theis said the stabilization work and repairs at the Kearny School should be complete this spring. She said then they aim to convert the former gymnasium and cafeteria into an XR or extended reality studio and production space. The estimated budgets for this phase are still being analyzed to take into account escalating construction costs.
“Post-pandemic inflation, supply-chain volatility, and tariffs pushed costs considerably higher than originally budgeted,” she said, “so we’ve moved to a phased approach to stay on schedule and within available funding.”
Keeping the historic nature of the building, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is critical according to Theis.
“That was another part of the component of why it was so expensive,” she said, "to make sure that we were preserving the integrity, especially the front of the building.” Funding so far, according to Theis, has come through the New Mexico State Capital Outlay, which helps pay for facilities built for public use, as well as from federal economic development programs and various philanthropies. Theis said they’ll continue to pursue these sources of financial support.
El Raton Media Works is already offering middle and high school classes in film-making to local youth. A couple of Raton student films won awards this spring at the 2025 Film Prize Junior Film Festival, where they competed against more than 200 films from 88 schools across New Mexico.
One of the films made in Raton, “Time Kids,” took both the Best Middle School Sci-fi/Fantasy Award and Audience Choice Award for Middle School, while the older kids’ “Demons and Angels” got the Audience Choice Award for High School.
A handful of students are simultaneously getting both high school and college credits through Santa Fe Community College according to Theis. She expects to award the program’s first film technician certificate at the end of the current school year.
