GRANTS, N.M. - The Grants Cibola County School Board held a meeting on November 6 that lasted over two hours. Discussions included the fund distribution from House Bill 450 and consultation meetings.
House Bill 450 Fund & Donation
House Bill 450 allocated $1,426,504.00 from the Public Schools Capital Outlay Fund for security improvements, career technical education, and repairing public school buildings.
Additionally, the Grants Chamber of Commerce donated $750.00 to Grants High School Football for their help at a Chamber event.
Monthly Finance/Budget Report
“We started having our budget conversations last year, planning our budget for the year…” Superintendent Lane Widner said “We talked a lot about, you know, what are these accounts? Where is this going?.. What are we doing with our funds?… So… the business office and I have worked together… we want to provide you with kind of monthly expenditure reports and spending reports and um and so kind of a you know when you when you get your bank statement from the bank… going to kind of keep you up to date with where we are as far as our spending.”
However, the monthly spending report was not shown or discussed in the meeting, as it was in the board members’ packets and not further discussed.
Tribal Consultation & Pre-Consultation Meetings
Superintendent Widner explained that he is trying to figure out how to best partner with the tribal stakeholders, tribal leaders, and several department of education within the school district to “do what’s best for our students from those different areas.”
Last month he had done a pre-consultation meeting with tribal leadership from Acoma and their department of education, in which he learned that Acoma has student success dialogues every month. “We had a preconsultation meeting with the Acoma Department of education.” He stated “We had a consultation with the department of Janay education where I presented that data… and they were very concerned about the lack of gifted students coming from the Navajo Nation and… we definitely know we’ve got work to do there.”
Widner explained that he is supposed to have a pre-consultation meeting with the tribal leadership from Laguna on November 20th and that “we’re serving Thanksgiving meals in our schools and um so we’re inviting education partners, we’re inviting tribal leadership partners to come to the summit and I would love for board members to be at the summit we’ll be providing a Thanksgiving meal for all stakeholders that are there.”
Executive Session
Discussion of limited personnel matters of the New Mexico Open Meetings Act, specifically for the Board to discuss Superintendent/ Board Relations and the Superintendent’s Evaluation and for the Superintendent to share limited personnel information with the board. No action will be taken and only the items listed will be discussed. Upcoming
November 24-28, 2025 - District Closed Thanksgiving Break December 4-6, 2025 NMSBA Annual Conference Albuquerque, NM