Los Lunas Schools to implement updated district attendance boundaries

LOS LUNAS — Seeking to balance enrollment and more efficiently allocate resources, the Los Lunas Schools Board of Education recently approved an updated district attendance boundary zone to be implemented in the 2025-26 school year.

“We have to make sure we have right-sized our schools because our schools are built for a certain number of students, so we have to make sure we are meeting the capacity,” said LLS Superintendent Susan Chavez. “We are also preparing for future growth in our community and it’s time that we start to look at those boundaries.”

Although many of the schools experienced some form of a boundary change, the Meadow Lake area was most impacted, especially the attendance boundary of Ann Parish Elementary.

APE, which has been part of the Tiger Nation since its opening in 1987, has served as a feeder school into Los Lunas Middle School and Los Lunas High School. However, the new attendance zones will now see APE become part of the Jaguar Nation and feed into Valencia Middle School and Valencia High School.

There are also attendance boundary ‘slivers’ for Raymond Gabaldon Elementary and Valencia Elementary in the APE zone that will be removed in the new boundaries, which will result in those students attending school closer to home at APE.

“These boundaries have been in place for many years,” said Chavez at the Feb. 18 BOE meeting. “We’ve had many discussions regarding school boundaries over the past five years, and we’ve been led through the discussions by Colleen Martinez from Visions In Planning. She has worked very closely with the district to look at the growth in Los Lunas inclusive of all communities that we serve.”

Removing the RGE slivers especially helps in improving transportation efficiency and enhancing traffic flow, as these students would no longer have to be bussed across the river.

“We have limited accessibility across the river to move people and do it in an efficient manner, and one of the things that came back is looking at where students currently reside, and currently go to school, and trying to eliminate some of that traffic crossing back and forth,” Martinez said.

APE principal Lisa Begay said during the workshop that students in these slivers would be welcome at APE, and she believes the shorter commute for these students already residing in Meadow Lake would be beneficial to them and their families.

Tome Elementary also has an attendance boundary sliver that has students within it attend Desert View Elementary. This was removed in the updated attendance zone boundaries along with another sliver in Valencia Elementary’s zone that has students in it attend RGE.

Removing the attendance zone pockets that sent students to other schools further from home also lends itself to be more community school-oriented, which was another goal board members wanted to implement through the update boundaries.

“A community school philosophy is where you stay within your community, and research shows that community schools have a tendency to have higher involvement and higher attachment,” said board president Michelle Osowski during the workshop.

Projected growth of the district and disproportionate facility use was another driving factor behind the decision.

Martinez said Los Lunas High School is using about 90 percent of its available capacity, while Valencia High School is only utilizing about 69 percent of its available capacity. Los Lunas Middle School is operating at about 87 percent of its available capacity, while Valencia Middle School is only operating at about 57 percent.

“We’ve got quite a few new and updated housing developments within the district, some of them have been built out, and some of them are new. The majority of them are in the Sundance area, and we have some north of (Katherine Gallegos Elementary),” said Martinez.

KGE’s boundary also had a notable change. There is currently an extended “boot heel” portion of the elementary school’s boundary that extends a ways south that has now been removed in the updated boundaries. Multiple parents who reside within this area voiced their opposition to this change at the Feb. 18 BOE meeting.

“We bought our house specifically because it was in the KGE boundary. It is a fantastic school and they have been incredibly happy at that school,” said KGE parent Andy Taylor during public comment. “I don’t feel like there was enough transparency with this particular issue. I found out about this redistricting yesterday when I got a survey emailed to me not knowing the board would be voting today on this exact matter. I am opposed to doing something with such a lack of transparency. I feel like our voices haven’t been considered by trying to ram this district change through.”

Chavez said during the meeting a survey was sent out to families that would be most impacted. The majority of APE parents who completed the survey were in favor, and when speaking to parents, Chavez said they are more than willing and happy their students will now be attending Valencia middle and high schools.

Chavez noted the amount of time the survey was made available to families from different schools varied, with the longest duration being RGE, which had the survey available for them for about a week and a half.

She confirmed the KGE survey, which was the shortest duration, only had it available to them for one day.

“There are 55 students that currently attend KGE that are in that boot heel (area) and that’s who was surveyed,” said Chavez. “We had 22 responses in a day, and it was overwhelming from both the surveys ... that they do not want the change.”

Though transportation would not be provided, Chavez said it is important to note that parents can submit out of boundary transfer requests.

“There are many parents that do it in our district, and most of those requests are granted based on school enrollment and capacity,” she said.

Osowski made a motion to accept the attendance boundary change for the 2025-26 school year with the caveat of ninth through 11th grade students remaining in their current boundaries. All board members voted in favor.

In a statement posted to the district’s website, llschools.net, there is a link to the current boundaries as well as a link to an interactive map to help families determine their district boundary in the updated map.

“We know change is often challenging but the changes are essential to the district’s and community’s future growth and we appreciate your patience and understanding as we navigate through the changes,” the statement read in part.