Mo Charnot
Students from Gonzales Community School exit the building at the end of the school day.
Although Gonzales Community School sits on the southeast corner of Santa Fe’s Casa Solana neighborhood mere blocks from some of the city’s more well-to-do neighborhoods, many of its students are in need of robust youth and family services, Crystal Ybarra tells SFR.
Ybarra, Santa Fe Public Schools’ chief equity and inclusion officer, has been working with Gonzales Principal Chris Lopez for two years now to figure out how to fill the needs gap.
“When we look at Gonzales, we have to remember it’s a Title I (high poverty) school, and it is in an area of town where we still have many homes that are generational. So, we have a lot of grandparents in the neighborhood still helping with their grandkids,” Ybarra says. “We still have high needs based on that subset of residents.”
She also notes a significant portion of the school’s 319 students are in need of additional services. Statistics from last year Ybarra shared with SFR say 22% of Gonzales students had individualized education plans (IEPs), and 17% of students were English language learners.
This year, Gonzales Community School has received the additional help its leaders have been looking for from Communities In Schools of New Mexico (CISNM), a nonprofit that provides resources and support to Title I schools in Santa Fe both schoolwide and through individualized student case management.
CISNM added Gonzales Community School to its roster of 13 partner schools alongside Capital High School, Milagro and Ortiz Middle Schools, Nina Otero and Aspen Community Schools, El Camino Real Academy, and Salazar, Ramirez Thomas, Cesar Chavez, Chaparral, Nava and Sweeney elementary schools. The nonprofit has also provided Gonzales with an on-site student success facilitator. According to CISNM Executive Director Michelle Katz, their organization has four major focus areas: attendance, academics, social-emotional learning and family engagement.
“With case management, we really meet the student and look at the whole family system, and think about what we can do to be of service to make sure they have everything they need to stay in school and to thrive in life as a family unit,” Katz tells SFR.
These needs vary depending on the student, Katz notes, and student success facilitators cover as many as possible. For example, each on-site employee’s office includes a food pantry and a free clothing closet. CISNM also provides students with emergency funds for utilities, rent and more, as well as after-school programs and tutoring sessions.
Lopez, who taught at the school since 2009 before becoming principal in 2020, says the new services will benefit students academically, socially and emotionally.
“Anything I can do to increase engagement and our ability to help our community, I am for, and CISNM definitely checks all those boxes,” Lopez tells SFR. “[Families] like to know somebody is there for them, somebody cares about them.”
Last year, CISNM provided SFPS students with more than 107,000 meals’ worth of groceries; paid $63,066 for students’ housing costs and bills out of its family emergency budget and raised $21,609 for school supplies, clothing and shoes through donations from community partners and individuals, according to its 2023-24 annual report. The report says 99% of case-managed students remained in school, and all 46 case-managed Capital High seniors graduated last year.
“We look at the relational piece that keeps a student coming to school if they feel connected to a caring and kind adult, and support and resources the family might need,” Katz says.
And it’s working. Capital High junior Barbara Palacios began receiving case management services from student success facilitator Maria Gonzales in her freshman year. This summer, Palacios tells SFR, she broke her arm and had difficulty receiving care after her family’s Medicaid was disconnected.
“I ended up coming up to Maria, and she helped me actually get my Medicaid back, and she helped me with papers to get glasses and things like that,” Palacios says, adding that Gonzales also helps her through struggles with attendance.
“She helped me find ways to cope with the things I didn’t want to go to class for,” Palacios says. “Most of them are just the people in my class—that’s the main reason why I don’t go. But she’s helped me find ways to do my work and get through it.”
Gonzales also helps Palacios overcome other barriers getting to class. For example, the day SFR interviewed Palacios, she was considering not attending school because she left her backpack in her car, which was being fixed at an auto shop. Instead, Gonzales provided her with extra school supplies for the day.
“It’s made high school much easier to get through emotionally, because high school is probably the worst few years of your life,” Palacios says. “If I ever have tough walls to break down, I guess [Gonzales] helps me break down those walls.”
Natalie Deibel, chief financial officer of CISNM, tells SFR their organization aims to offer “anything teachers need so they can focus on teaching.”
“When a student needs shoes in order to come to school, the teachers can’t help with that. That shouldn’t be their job. That’s what we do,” Deibel says. “We make sure those students can get through the door…that they can stay in school and we can allow the educators to do what they’re trained to do and can excel at.”
Deibel says CISNM services cost about $125,000 annually per school site, and half of the funding for the expansion into Gonzales Community School comes from a grant from CIS National. The other half, CISNM must match.
However, CISNM has received a boost to help fund Gonzales’ program: $150,000 from Enterprise Bank & Trust, paid over three years.
Dion Silva, Enterprise’s Santa Fe regional president (and a former CISNM board member), tells SFR Enterprise funds educational initiatives and programs like these because “no child should ever be deprived of opportunity or hope.”
“We believe if you don’t live in a healthy and sustainable community, we cannot be a healthy and sustainable organization,” Silva says.
At Gonzales, Katz says CISNM staff have conducted needs assessment surveys to figure out their plan to meet students’ needs there, and from there will create a school support plan and build a caseload of between 35 and 40 students to case-manage. Students are typically referred by the school’s student wellness team, Katz says, but students and their families can also self-refer.
Ybarra says she feels “it just made sense” for Gonzales to receive opportunities from CISNM.
“We’ve seen the relationship factor be so significant to the students’ progress, both personally and then in their academic growth,” Ybarra says. “[Lopez] has such a vision around the community at Gonzales. This partnering allows him to take those visions one step further.”
