Elks donate dictionaries to students
District reviews attendance policy

By Jim Tiffin
Staff Writer

GRANTS — At their meeting Tuesday night, school board members learned Elks Lodge No. 2053 here has donated more than 300 dictionaries to students in the third grade throughout the Grants-Cibola County School District.

Those students may keep the dictionaries forever, Gloria Chavez, assistant superintendent said.

"Schools That Work" was also presented to the school board as a program that will help students at Laguna-Acoma High School, Chavez said.

The program allows math or English skills to be taught throughout the curriculum at the school. For example, math skills normally taught in a math class may be incorporated in wood shop, welding, or computerized drafting. School district officials have already attended one training session, she said. The next one, which will have teachers from LAHS, as well as Sky City Community School and Laguna Middle School, will be in Atlanta, Ga., on Feb. 7-8.

This is based on a 20-year research based initiative that provides grants through the Carl Perkins program to help students develop skills that will make them successful, she said.

Attendance has been a concern by board members and district officials and one way to help improve it is to have an academic calendar that is universally approved and followed, she said.

Central office is working on having an academic calendar that incorporates all the cultural events requiring students to be out of school for the Pueblos of Acoma and Laguna that coordinates well with district schools, allowing students to be out of class to attend those events, minimizing the attendance impact on the school district.

Several of the district's schools did not pass the state's adequate yearly progress in spite of increasing test scores so dramatically they met or exceeded the state's requirements. The reason those schools did not meet the state's requirements was attendance.

"We are trying to develop a countywide calendar," she said, "because some parents have children that attend more than one school and more than one school district."

So, if one school has classes on days that the other school does not, because of a calendar problem, many times the parents allow the student in the school that has classes to stay home or go with the family.

"Our goal is to have an approved calendar by April that the school boards and the tribal entities will approve,"she said.

— To contact reporter Jim Tiffin call 287-2197 or e-mail: jtiffin@blackmesa-isp.net.