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Superintendent, principal tout gains at Atrisco Heritage and ask legislature to address absenteeism, HVAC and bell schedules
Summary
At a Legislative Education Study Committee visit to Atrisco Heritage Academy, district leaders highlighted interim-assessment gains and bilingual-seal attainment, urged more flexible state funding and asked lawmakers to reassess attendance laws, transportation and HVAC investment as key barriers to student attendance.
Representative Andres Romero convened the Legislative Education Study Committee at Atrisco Heritage Academy, where school leaders and the superintendent described academic gains and pressed the Legislature for policy changes to address chronic absenteeism and infrastructure constraints.
Principal Anthony Lovato told the committee Atrisco Heritage is now 16 years old, serves more than 2,000 students and “last year, we graduated 436 students, and 112 of them received their bilingual seals,” citing career pathways in business and culinary arts and active extracurricular programs that include mariachi and athletics.
Superintendent Gabriela Blakey framed the district’s work around four goals — early literacy, middle-school math, college-and-career readiness and social-emotional learning — and pointed to interim assessments showing sizable gains in several schools. “We over the summer received $60,000,000 of an increase to SEG,” Blakey said, and argued that more flexible use of funding would let districts scale promising, locally designed practices.
Committee members focused questions on chronic absenteeism and re-engagement. Rep. Brian Baca said legislators want to help schools “but sometimes we get too focused on the numbers, and we forget about that it’s down to those students.” Blakey told members chronic absenteeism is a top challenge and described expanded attendance outreach, home visits and hiring of an assistant principal dedicated to the issue. She said the district average absenteeism is about 37 percent and that Atrisco Heritage’s rate is roughly 20 percent (approx.), calling for a review of attendance laws and closer interagency coordination with CYFD and juvenile probation.
Members also pressed on safety and school climate. Blakey said schools that feel secure can strengthen community pride and that security measures must be balanced with making families feel welcome. On facilities, members and the superintendent discussed HVAC reliability in a district that manages about 20,000 heating and cooling units; Blakey described capacity and equipment limits and warned that replacing evaporative systems with refrigerated air across the district would be expensive and require major renovation work.
The committee heard that changes to bell times were driven by an effort to align instructional hours across grade levels and to use bus routes more efficiently; Blakey said the chief complaint from families has been how late some schools now release students and that the district is working on stabilizing schedules and increasing before- and after-school programming.
What’s next: Committee members asked for additional data — including counts of referrals to CYFD and juvenile probation and more detail on district absenteeism trends — and the committee moved on to its next agenda item, school cash balances.
