By Lynn Janes

The Cobre Consolidated School Board held a regular meeting on January 29, 2024, at Hurley Elementary. Board members in attendance included, , Gabriella Begay, Gilbert Guadiana, and David Terrazas. Acting superintendent Michael Koury also attended. Serena Murillo did not attend.

A group of the students from Hurley Elementary read couplets they had come up with and illustrations for them. Couplets, a poetry stanza has two lines that usually rhyme. Each line will be two items of the same kind.

Kiwanis had student of the month awards that Begay read and gave to the students.

Devan Baca has a very good moral compass and leads the class in norms. He has integrity, honesty, perseverance, and empathy. He always shows positivity and leadership in class.

Mireya Zapata, a senior at Cobre High School and has a 3 point plus GPA works hard and always challenges herself. She has been enrolled in honors classes and was nominated for the DHR good citizen award.

Zapata also provides a student representative report for the board each month. She said the seniors had asked if they could decorate their caps for graduation and had been told yes after they submitted a draft of what they wanted to put on them and had approval. HMS would be doing a blood drive and she asked that people help any way they could. An enchilada fundraiser for Cobre basketball would be coming up and she encouraged people to support it.

Action items.

The board approved the agenda and minutes from January 16, 2024. They also approved the bills that the finance committee had gone over and approved. They approved four budget items, universal free lunch, literacy state development increase, homeless emergency rescue fund and school violence prevention program.

Begay said the rescue fund had been used for a family whose house burnt down and gave some other examples of how it could be used.

Koury said the violence prevention program had come from a grant he had applied for and received for $500,000. It will be used for security cameras and radios for all employees.

New business

Guadiana requested that a line item be put on the budget for the golf course. He said he had talked about it before and wanted to know if it had been done and how much had been allocated. Begay said it had been a discussion in the finance committee. A presentation would be made about the needs and cost for the golf course. Guadiana said they already have that. Begay said that currently the district has been doing it all but since Bayard has new leadership they will reach out and see what can be done to share in that cost. Koury said he had someone volunteer to work on the fields and expressed interest in doing the golf course. Currently he had been hired as a substitute so he would be compensated.

Begay said they needed to recognize those that had maintained it for free for so many years. They agreed to discuss that further.

The finance committee met, and they will be looking for another community member to be on the board. The one they had resigned due to potential conflict of interest. Begay said the past meeting, they reviewed the bills and budget. They also discussed how they would adjust for the loss of some of the grants received in the past that they will no longer be receiving.

The audit committee had not met but Guadiana said they will meet on January 31, 2024. They have been working on two years of audits and special audits.

Board members report

Guadiana said he didn't have a report but had received information from a resident that had concerns about the schools. He will be meeting with Koury and doing a walkthrough of the schools to address those concerns.

Terrazas thanked the schools for being involved in the youth programs.

Begay said she had attended the school board association meeting in Santa Fe and Guadiana had also attended. She had also been able to attend a Snell basketball game. She thanked the teachers and staff for all the work they do.

Superintendent's report

Koury said the safety and security award for $500,000 had been a team effort. The first thing they would use the grant for would be security cameras at San Lorenzo.

Koury had reached out to David Chavez on the strategic plan. The next thing they would need to do will be a board retreat and they needed to think about some dates to have that.

He had attended Grant County Day in Santa Fe and Cobre's All American Cheerleaders preformed on the floor during the day session and said they did an amazing job representing the school. Koury met with the secretary of education and spoke to him on the four-day-week issue. He met with the governor and said she has done an amazing job with education although she has been the one pushing for the five-day-week that affects so many rural schools. He thanked all the representatives for their hard work.

Suzanne Chavira, director of academics, gave the board an update on the curriculum. She went over the curriculums and said they had been doing a lot of training. Some of the training had been in Albuquerque and Las Cruces but some representatives came to the schools to do training.

Begay said she knew some of the grants would expire in June 2024 and asked if that money had been spent. Chavira said all the teachers had gotten everything they had requested and didn't have anything else to spend it on.

She went over the testing data and provided the board with documents and highlighted for them what she felt would be the most important. The data compared last year's scores to this year's. She briefly went over the grades and outcomes. She pointed out that many had been over the state average, and they had the highest growth in K-2. She attributed it to the interventions done. Many of the scores came out higher than last year and came out higher than the state averages. The high school had some drops and she felt that had been due to their not understanding the importance of the tests.

Guadiana and Begay had questions and comments. Some had to do with the changes in types of testing and possible reason for the lower scores.

Koury had provided a list of fundraisers to the board in their packet. He added that he had been proud of the elementary schools' data but they must get better on math. The staff has had a lot of discussions since the data came out.

Guadiana pointed out they needed a lot more participation from the parents.

Meeting adjourned.