GRANTS, N.M. – The Regular School Board Meeting on December sixth began with Superintendent Maz Perez acknowledging Cibola County's Sheriff Larry Diaz, for coming to meet with him to talk about security. Perez stated that Sheriff Diaz is committed to working closely with the school district to keep staff and students safe. He then ended by thanking him for starting in his position with the schools in mind.
The meeting then moved on to presentations. The first presentation before the Board was for Los Alamitos Middle School. Every school in New Mexico creates an annual plan for state reporting and accountability. This is called a DASH plan. Part of Los Alamitos' DASH plan are two areas of focus. The first is School Leadership and Systems. This means that the school staff will follow school wide student behavioral management expectations and provide students with support as needed. The second is Layer One Core Instruction. This means that teachers will be expected to provide deep level instruction aligned with the District Learning Plan and NM Standards all year.
The current demographics for the school are 417 students, 35 certified staff members, four long term substitutes, 18 classified staff members, and two vacancies. Two certified teachers have been selected to fill in positions held by long term substitutes and will start in January. The two vacant positions still open are for an attendance assistant and a 7th grade math teacher.
The school district is also now implementing a Career Technical Education program in its schools. Los Alamitos Middle School highlighted what it is doing to offer students career pathways. The three career paths they shared were science and technology, construction, and agriculture. It was stated that these courses are all exploration based and are not for credit. The primary goal is simply to give the students exposure to the given fields. This offers them a chance to pursue some of their interests earlier in their education. The presentation also covered clubs and programs held at LAMS as well. These include Yearbook Club, Student Council, National Junior High Society, and Middle School Athletics. LAMS Athletics now includes baseball and softball as well.
The presentation also covered two 8th grade sponsored trips that will take place in June. Trips like these haven't taken place since before the pandemic. They will both be five day trips to Washington D.C. and New York City from June 5th to June 9th and June 16th to June 20th.sixty one students will be able to participate with 33 chaperones. Students have been selected based on academics, behavior, and teacher recommendations. The school also covered the effort that is being put into behavior influences in school. A feature they use is a behavioral flowchart for student data. It is accessible by all staff to identify records of behavior issues for students and also has links to resources such as the LAMS Behavioral Handbook or the Pre-Referral Intervention Manual that are used school wide. If any teacher has trouble with a particular student, they can use this resource to gain insight on what they should do. The reasoning behind this is to find alternatives to sending children out of the classroom in order to make sure they are still able to continue learning. They hope that this will lead the way into visible changes in student behavior issues.
At the end of the presentation, Superintendent Perez took a moment to acknowledge the effort that the school is putting into all of its endeavors and thanked those involved for being there before the School Board.