By Lynn Janes

The Cobre Consolidated School Board held a regular April 7, 2025. Board members in attendance included Gabriella Begay, Emmarie Heredia, Gilbert Guadiana, David Terrazas and Angelina Hardin. Superintendent Michael Koury also attended.

Craig Pfeifer, Kiwanis, attended to present the student of the month awards.

Christopher Springer has always been willing to lend a hand and do it with a smile. He works with the city of Bayard as part of the initiative zone program, and he always is there to help with anything needed.

Zeonee Simeone Gonzales has been well behaved and respectful towards others. She participates in class and is always willing to help her peers.

Isenya Silva's principal said, "She is a blessing to the school." She has been involved in many things such as volleyball, National History Day and softball to name just a few and named all-star volleyball player. She has a GPA of 4.28

Jaelen Crotts has worked hard to be on the honor roll with a 4.0 GPA and tries to be a good role model to those around her. She cares about the other students and teachers.

The board had not held an executive session before the meeting as scheduled.

The board approved the agenda with a few changes made by Koury. They will remove approval of the audit, Wendy Tow, Bayard Elementary presentation. They will be moving several items to after the approval of the agenda.

New Business

Suzanne Chavira, director of academics, had several teachers present to speak on curriculum. The district has been on a six-year adoption cycle for core curriculum. This year they shopped for science curriculum. They had approximately ten presentations by vendors. She had created a team of two teachers at each school and the principal to attend those presentations. At that point they narrowed it down to the top two. From there they had those top two come present to the entire school.

Nacona Grijalva, Cobre High School, brought back the materials from the first presentation and had the science teachers go over it. She also has some of the students review the materials. Grijalva had also taken into consideration Beyond Textbooks and the state standards and went over some of the curriculum, what they offered and the positive and negative of them. Some had offered an e-book, so they didn't have to take textbooks home. Some of them supplied presentations for the teachers on topics. They all offered many positive extras to help students and teachers in the classroom. In the end they felt the McGraw Hill would work the best for the high school.

Grijalva added it would be nice to have a program called Physics in a Box to help with labs in the physics classes. It contains over 100 labs and would be reusable.

Begay asked Chavira if they could purchase both for the science curriculum. Chavira said they could not. The McGraw Hill will cost the district $41,000 and just one of the Physics in a Box would cost $75,000. She had tried to negotiate the price down but could not. His first quote for Physics in a Box had been $185,000. That would have been the whole budget for the whole year. She will be meeting again and hopes they can purchase one box. She only has a budget for the year of $220,000. She is not sure where she could begin to find the $75,000.

Damon Cearley, Snell Middle School, said they had sat through several presentations. Both the teachers that attended and listened to the presentations had picked Amplified. Keeping kids engaged for more than eight minutes can be hard but this one could keep them engaged. A lot of it will be online, they engage the students and the videos are professional. They do mock conferences, mock emails, mock internships and things like that. It does a lot of assessments and gives the teachers the ability to modify them or create their own. The assessments will be based on state testing standards. Cearley also wanted to have the Physics in a Box.

Adrianna Martinez and Anisse Salcido, from the elementary schools had also chosen Amplified. She said Amplified would be a phenomenal, based curriculum that provides educators with the opportunity to activate curiosity in their students by asking them to solve real world problems. They continued to go over all the positive points of this curriculum and mentioned some of the same as mentioned before. A big selling point for the teachers had been its big literacy component. It had proven to improve literacy scores.

Theresa Villa, special projects coordinator, had a report for the board. The parent center had opened. The board had a long discussion about school supplies and the district paying that cost. They do receive grants and donations from Freeport McMoRan. The funds had been used at Summer Fest, and they had given out supplies at that time. Guadiana said the district should pay the cost.

LaVerne Martinez, Hurley Elementary, had not been able to present at the last meeting due to knee surgery. She went over all the events that had been going on. She then went over all the assessments and the data it had provided and the growth the school had. Martinez said they had taken 808 tests and failed 684 and explained what that meant. She continued on to point out all the growth and increases they had through the year in the data. Having interventionists had been vital to the success. Many of the students that have had an interventionist have benefited with higher scores. The students would be starting math testing the next day.

Margaret Begay, Snell Middle School principal, had a presentation for the board. She started with the Dash Plan which gives the goals of the school. They had done an engagement survey with the students and found they needed to increase student engagement. The school had their first ELA (English language arts) literacy night, and it had been a huge success. All the teachers had been present, and a lot of the parents had turned out.

Twice a month they have PLC (professional learning community), and they look at the student needs and communicate with the parents about student achievement. This had been implemented the previous year. She went over some of the other programs they have to help students achieve more.

The students have a mural project in collaboration with three local artists. She had not seen the proposal for the mural yet but would the next day and all she knew about it had been it would highlight the mining district. They had collaborated with the Silver City Museum for oral histories, and it will be coming up on May 7, 2025. The Spanish department will be doing something with Dia De los Ninos and recruit for a mariachi group. She continued with a lot of things that have been and will be happening at Snell Middle School.

New business

Guadiana had asked for the issues on the softball field to be addressed in this board meeting. He had wanted a booth at each entry point. Right now, some have to use their vehicles to hide from the wind and rain. Otherwise, they have just been bringing their own chair and table. Koury agreed he would like to have a booth at each entry to keep people out of the elements. They will be building two and the booth will be mobile and can be moved from field to field depending on the season. The district has the funding to build these.

Guadiana spoke to an area behind the bleachers he felt has been unsafe. Koury said they had plans in place to address this and it would be completed by the next softball season.

The board went into executive session. They would be reviewing the superintendent's contract and personnel matters

The board came back into open session and said no action had taken place.

Action Items.

No action would be taken on the superintendent contract.

The board approved the 2025 district Open Meetings resolution. Gabrielle Begay read the full resolution.

The board approved the minutes for the past meetings of February 24, 2025, and March 26, 2025.

The finance committee had not met but would meet the following day.

Heredia said the audit committee had not met since last time. Guadiana had questions. They had submitted 2022 audit three weeks prior and were in the process of submitting the others and then finish the special audit.

Board member reports

Gabriella Begay thanked everyone for attending the board retreat and thought it had been beneficial. "We need to remember to focus on the task at hand and we are here to serve the community. So, it is very important that we fully participate." They had seen everyone's leadership style and how they viewed things from a different points of view. The board had gotten to know each other better. She also congratulated the cheerleading team for being state champions.

Heredia echoed what Gabriella Begay had just said and added a congratulations to the power lifting team.

Hardin said they had covered everything.

Terrazas echoed what they all had said and that Cobre had made significant strides in sports this school year.

Guadiana said he echoed what they had said on the student achievements and felt the retreat had unified them.

Koury said they had a list of fundraisers in their packet.

Meeting adjourned.