SODA to focus on boosting graduation rates, proficiency

LOS LUNAS — School of Dreams Academy Superintendent Mike Ogas said the upcoming 2024-25 school year is sure to be an exciting one.

To start, the charter school recently had its five year charter renewed from the New Mexico Public Education Commission, which came with some conditions.

“The conditions are to increase our proficiency rates in English language arts and mathematics, as well as increase our graduation rate and keep our graduation rate steady,” Ogas said.

To address this, Ogas said the administration has been “laser focused” on developing initiatives to meet the conditions, which Ogas said will be monitored by the state on an annual basis.

One of these new initiatives is called “walk toward your dreams,” which is dedicated to boosting graduation rates and is targeted towards students in grades nine through 12. The plan includes implementation of different tiers of intervention for student success.

“These tiers utilize the many data systems that we’ve been putting in place over the last several years that improve our Power School capabilities, our ability to track attendance, behavior and coursework and kind of pull it all together in real time kinds of reports,” said Ogas.

This improved monitoring system will allow for a more full picture look at how students are progressing and will allow for quicker intervention if there is additional support needed for the student.

“It’s redefining what our individual learning plan looks like and how we utilize our ILP to make it more of a living document and more relevant for the students and their families,” he said.

Ogas said through this, one of the major goals going into the new school year is to increase communication to parents and families on how their children are progressing and what the school is doing to help.

SODA will be hosting upcoming parent nights early on in the new school year to introduce this initiative along with other updates, he said.

Ogas is also excited to announce that SODA received $1.2 million in capital outlay funds during the last legislative session, which the superintendent said is the largest appropriation the school has received.

“Two hundred thousand of that is going toward updating our existing security camera system, and the $1 million is for the plan and design of the new facility,” said Ogas. “We asked for $750,000 and they saw fit to give us a million dollars, so they’re very much supportive of what we’re trying to do.”

Momentum continues to grow for SODA’s goal of establishing a new building encompassing 20 acres as new facility rankings put out recently by the Public School Facilities Authority lists SODA as No. 1 for schools to be considered for funding of a new facility.

In addition, the Los Lunas Village Council voted on July 11 to accept SODA educational foundation’s proposal for the purchase of the southern 10 acres they are incorporating into their new facility design to allow for development of that area.

SODA will also be continuing and building upon their innovation zone initiative dedicated to hands-on career technical education during the coming school year. Ogas said their CTE programs are all student initiated as they work with students to identify careers they might be interested in and incorporate that into their ILP.

“Using this data, our CTE team then identifies the programs that are in demand for the student population,” said Ogas. “So last year, we started a plumbing program and, this year, we’re going to do HVAC. We may even begin a cosmetology or barber (program); we’re working with some professionals in the community for that right now.”

SODA was also among 10 districts across the state, and the only charter school, to be recognized by the N.M. Public Education Department recently for their CTE initiatives and the high-graduation rate associated with students who are CTE concentrators.

Ogas also wants the public to know they are still accepting referrals for their pre-k program.

“We have a pre-k program for 4 year olds that has a capacity of 20 students and then we have the 3-year-old and the 4-year-old pre-k program for students that may need more support in language development, cognition, behavioral or those who would require an IEP (individualized educational plan).”