On the 18th of February, the Grants School Board held a regular school board meeting lasting nearly three hours. During this meeting there were discussions concerning achievements, progress, and issues.
Mesa View Elementary School Construction Update
Mesa View has been undergoing construction for several months and was on set to meet the timeline until an issue was discovered.
According to the design staff, the beams are to be built with 14-gauge metal, which happened. Unfortunately, the roof requires that the beams be made of 10-gauge metal. With this unfolding issue, construction timelines will have to be pushed up, and additional delays may be required if there are more problems.
The PSFA overseeing the construction have been unresponsive to the flaws in the design, leading to the need to hire a third-party design professional. This professional will review the designs and recalculate all of the structural loads which could lead to finding more complications, in which the parts that have already been framed may need to be deconstructed and the building redesigned.
The design professional is pushing to resume construction and is working closely with the district in order to resolve these issues and get this project finished.
GHS Purchases Cooling Tower
During a previous school board meeting, school board members discussed the issues that Winter has brought to various schools, forcing school day delay and cancellations.
With many of the classrooms too cold to learn in, the district created opportunities for asynchronous learning, which allowed students to learn online with school-issued computers like during the COVID-19 crisis, then onto sharing classrooms. The school’s service provider has given them an opportunity to purchase the cooling tower which they have been leasing at a monthly fee of $17,000. Negotiations brought the amount down to about $113,000, which is only a fraction of what these towers tend to cost.
Superintendent Lane Widner recommended the purchase of this tower, which would help the school get through the next year and a half, while the GHS system is updated.
This new system update would include portable units, costing between 4 and 5 thousand dollars. With this new system, students would no longer need to miss a school day because the classrooms are too cold.
Once Widner receives a price quote they will discuss this update further in a meeting.
This purchase was approved by the school board and a plan to work with the PSFA to replace the systems inside Grants High School is in the works.
180-Day Calendar
The 180-day academic calendar has been discussed in several of these meetings.
This calendar required the schools to have their students in class for a minimum of 180 instructional days. This is one of the reasons the heating issues in school have been a serious problem, as instructional days are being delayed or cancelled.
A judge in Roswell overturned the 180-day litigation, according to the school superintendent. Superintendent Widner spoke about how GCCS was able to make the 180-day calendar work, while joining in on the suit, at which point Grants Cibola County School Board President Francie Lee began to clap.
School Districts will now be able to set their own calendars, but it may lead to students spending less time in the classroom.
Across the Grants-Cibola County School District, only 18 percent of students can perform math at grade level and only 36 percent of students can read at grade level, while only 29 percent of students can do science at grade level.
Teacher Awards
At the beginning of this meeting, teachers were either SEL Board recipients or Edu champions for the month of February.
Each teacher that won was recommended from their school or principle.
The SEL Award was given to Heidi Bohannon, an aid at Bluewater elementary, who has been working there for several months, driving one-to-one aid.
The second SEL recipient was Malinda Thayer.
The Edu champion was special education teacher Cheenee Newberry. A coworker informed them about how Newberry is great at collaborating, does social and emotional learning, and it can be seen how she loves what she does. Unlike the SEL trophy recipients, Newberry received a large belt, such as what wrestlers win.
Los Alamitos Trips
Math teacher for the Los Alamitos middle school, Ms. Brownfield, requested that the school be allowed to take two major trips a year.
In order to be eligible for these trips, one must have good grades and attendance throughout middle school. This trip is student funded and will take them to New York, but now there may be a second trip.
Ms. Brownfield requested that they be allowed to take one in March and another in June. The March trip would be around the tenth to the fourteenth, while the June trip would be from the twelfth to the eighteenth. In March, it would be all four days in New York, while in June, it would be two days in Washington D.C. and five days in New York City.
The first of these trips is planned, with 23 students and 16 chaperones able to go, while the latter has 50 students and 33 chaperones.
After hearing all of this, the school board decided to allow them to go on these trips.
FFA
In observance of National FFA work, Grants High School and Los Alamitos Middle School was put on the agenda for this meeting.
The FFA group are students who are involved in an agricultural class choose to be in the group, which also does competitions.
There are currently 84 FFA members, 30 of which are actively participating. Several of the members took turns discussing what the FFA has been doing.
The accomplishments of 2024 were presented, in which included the three-star national chapter, New Mexico FFA state superior chapter finalist, fifth place team in New Mexico FFA state landscape design. In 2024, Harry Lee won third place in plant systems division one at the National FFA. This year, Monika Ruiz was runner-up in Spanish creed speaking, which qualifies her for nationals.
So far, the qualifies for state competitions are the state CDEs, entomology, floriculture, landscape design, and horse. Doing the Greenland creed will be Monika Ruiz. Participating in the Greenland speech is Jesus Naiera. Performing the chapter speech will be Riko Valencia. The Greenland quiz team will be able to participate.
The Chapter, which is the group of FFA student members, have monthly meetings, in which they get goodies and present a participant with the member of the month title. They attend a national convention in Indianapolis and have FFA day at roundhouse in Santa Fe. On February 7th and 8th a few of them were able to attend a leadership conference.
In February they performed literacy presentations at each elementary school in the district. They gave cards to those at the nursing home, showing that they are willing to serve the Grants community.
The classroom activities are made possible and better by having a hydroponic system, flower cooler, outdoor garden bed, large outdoor planters, and animal science labs.
They have applied for a grant, in which they hope to be able to get another thing to improve their class.
The Chapter has a number of upcoming activities.
1 March will have T or C CDE competitions.
6 March there is a Wingate Agriculture career fair.
15 March there is a CDE district competition in Roswell.
1-5 April is the state FFA CDEs in Las Cruces.
9 April will be Donkey basketball. People can go to the old gym at GHS and adults can ride donkeys while playing basketball.
3 May will be the Chapter Banquet.
27-30 May is the state FFA convention in Las Cruces.
The FFA group will be attending competitions soon, with the desire to win and hopes to recruit more members.
The board remains focused on improving the education environment and planning for the future, with their next Regular School Board meeting taking place on the 18th of March and a Spring Budget Workshop from 9-11 April.