Photos and article by Margaret Hopper

At right, Gabriel Holguin and Gilbert Guadiana are new Cobre School Board members.

Cobre's school board met at Snell Middle School March 13, 2017. All members were present. They returned from the closed session which began at 6:00 and opened the public portion at 7:48 p.m.

The first action was to vote to retain the chairman, Toy Sepulveda, and the vice chair, Frank Cordova; the next vote was to select a board secretary, Frank Gomez, to replace Fran Kelly, whose term had expired.

Pat Abalos, principal of Snell, spoke about the recent testing for science, and said PARCC tests would start in April. Then he introduced Hannah Wecks, Librarian, who updated the board on a grant last fall, Keep New Mexico Beautiful, which gave Snell $2400 to spend on native, low-water plants. Her photos to all board members showed the planted areas ready to sprout with the next rains in selected areas around the middle school.

At left, Cobre science students talk about the newly acquired 3-D printer.

Cindy Lee told how she wrote a grant for a 3-D printer and the results she and the students had with it. The grant money paid for the printer and materials to use. The designed object, of plastic, builds layer by layer to produce the forms. Considering a Gǣcookie cutter,Gǥ Lee said they might come up with a student-prep meal. To build skills, she said if the students want to use the printer, they have to write a proposal first. Some of the projects take many hours to print.

Two representatives, Cari Lemon and Michele Geise, presented the Healthy Kids, Healthy Community update for Alicia Edwards, who was there but had to leave early. It was 8:15 by this time, and the real meeting had not yet started. They explained that the program was teaming up with the School Health Advisory Committee (SHAC). There is a policy, a drop-off site and there are deadlines for work PED would like to be done.

Additional ideas would be written in somewhat later. The big target is to have all drafts completed and approved in the May board meetings of area schools. AprilG