When Nisa Salas-Gallegos moved back to Santa Fe from El Paso, Texas, in the middle of her freshman year of high school, the change was, in her words, “horrible.”
It was the spring of 2020, and as she entered her first semester at Capital High School, she faced SFPS’ switch into online learning as the COVID-19 pandemic surged. When she and her younger brother Salvador moved to Santa Fe after her mother regained custody of them, several of her class credits did not transfer from her previous school, which affected her all the way through her senior year.
“When I was a senior, I was in freshman classes,” Nisa tells SFR. “My transcript got messed up. I had to redo three classes, even though I had already done them. It was terrible.”
The disorder even continued into one of her favorite extracurriculars, orchestra. She’d been playing viola and bass since fifth grade, but was placed in Capital High’s beginner class, which she says led to her no longer wanting to participate.
“I was basically just learning the same things over and over again, so it was pretty boring,” Nisa says.
After returning to school from Christmas break in her sophomore year, Nisa had her first interaction with Communities in Schools New Mexico (CISNM). Maria Gonzales, a student success facilitator assigned to Capital High, walked into her classroom and handed her a birthday card.
CISNM is a nonprofit that provides resources and support to Title I schools in New Mexico through individualized student case management to improve attendance, academics, social-emotional learning and family engagement.
Gonzales tells SFR she uses PowerSchool (the school district’s education software) to identify students who are at risk to build her caseload of about 40 students. At the time, Nisa and her younger brother were receiving services from the district’s Adelante program, which aids students and families experiencing homelessness or housing instability.
“I had to build my caseload from scratch,” Gonzales says. “I had this long list of students at risk, and it could be financial, homelessness—all kinds of factors that built that up.”
Following her first introduction, Gonzales built a working relationship with Nisa that has lasted beyond her graduation. Gonzales met with Nisa during the school day if she needed tutoring or emotional support, help communicating with her teachers, family emergency funds or access to food, clothes, hygiene items and other school supplies.
Every Friday, Gonzales would hand out food baskets to the students in her caseload, though she now only does so once every two weeks. She also provided clothes to Nisa when necessary. Nisa’s mother, Jhenna, says the assistance her family has received from CISNM has been monumental, from home visits to assistance with rent and utility bills.
“Sometimes, we can't afford all the supplies when we need to get them,” Jhenna says. “It's very helpful because even if they don't have it, they'll get us in touch with a different program that can help us—it’s a very good network.”
Sinte Torrez, another student success facilitator at Capital High, says though CISNM’s support is “spread really thin” across its families, they want to have an impact on as many families as possible. Each student success facilitator has a caseload of about 40 students, but they try to stretch it beyond that.
“Outside of our caseload, we have what we call our ‘other 40’—our non-case-managed students that are not with CISNM,” Torrez says. “We have a lot of other students outside of our caseload that we're also reaching out to and providing support to.”
According to its report for the 2023-24 school year, CISNM has served 5,635 students across 12 schools, and 536 students and their families received one-on-on intensive case management support. CISNM’s student success facilitators have raised and distributed more than $1.06 million to prevent eviction or utility shut-offs for its families since 2019 and also brought 35 community partners into the schools to provide emotional support and enrichment activities.
Gonzales also oversees a few student group activities at Capital High, including Girls Empowerment, a group that encourages girls to “expand their aspirations” through reflective team-building activities. Nisa began attending every other Thursday during her sophomore year.
“Different people would come in and talk to us, and then we got to learn about them and different job titles these women do,” Nisa recalls. “Then, we got to do some projects for self-confidence, and also for working together as a group.”
Within Girls Empowerment, Nisa grew her interest in advocacy through a paid internship with youth empowerment nonprofit Earth Care, and through the New Mexico Dream Team, a youth-led organization advocating for immigrant families and students. Nisa attended group field trips to the State Capitol and canvassed for the Vote Yes for Kids initiative, which supported a (successful) state constitutional amendment to create a trust fund for early childhood education.
Sinte Torrez, another student success facilitator with CISNM, says encouraging students to pursue their passions is one of the organization’s focuses for student success.
“That's what we're about—just trying to remind these guys that school and education can be and should be fun. We do try to bring these guys on as many extracurricular activities and outings [as we can],” Torrez says.
Although Nisa graduated in 2023, she’s not the first or last in her family to receive support from CISNM. Her older brother, Frankie, received one-on-one help from Torrez and another former student success facilitator when he had difficulty transitioning into high school.
Nisa and Frankie’s younger brother Salvador, now a sophomore at Capital High, has received academic and extracurricular support since middle school. Initially, Salvador says he had difficulty adjusting to high school, but says Torrez helped push him toward meeting his academic goals and extracurricular involvement.
Previously, he played baseball, but quit after feeling overwhelmed with his schedule, and now he is involved in theater. Initially, he worked as a lights operator, but he now performs in two of the school’s spring plays as an actor.
“Part of our programming is about surrounding students with a community of support,” Torrez says. “I'm really glad that he's picking up something else…the more our students are involved, the more they're likely to come here and be successful and take pride in what they're doing and take pride in their school.”
This year, Salvador says he’s focusing on improving his attendance.
“Last year, I was really a troublemaker. Once I got towards the middle of the year, and I was talking to [Torrez] more, I was like, ‘I gotta get my stuff together,’” Salvador says. “He helped me a lot—he’d always encourage me.”
Even after graduation, Torrez and Gonzales say their work is not done. CISNM has an alumni program they’ve been running for a few years now, and they’ve been following up with Nisa and their other case-managed students who have since graduated to “plant seeds of continued success.”
“We're continuing to reach out,” Torrez says. “We could have just wiped our hands and said, ‘She's done,’ but here we are. We're still continuing to encourage [Nisa] and promote her, because we know that she's going to affect her younger brother as well and the decisions they make … we want them to make good decisions. We want them to think about what they want for themselves and their family, career-wise and education-wise.”
