Education

The Los Alamos Middle School debate team, otherwise known as the Junior Hilltalkers may be just over a year old, but they are acting like old pros, chalking up high scores in most speech and debate competitions they enter, according to Sherri Bublitz, their teacher and coach.

At a  recent speech and debate competition at East Mountain High School in Sandia Park,  they combined forces with the  Los Alamos High Hilltalkers and the entire team managed to score second place overall against the 10 schools that took part in the competition.

Along with the high school Hilltalkers, the middle schoolers competed in four types of debate: “congressional,” “Lincoln/Douglas,” “public forum” and “policy,” a type of debate that the U.S. Congress commonly uses, Bublitz said.

The team also excelled in the speech categories.

The team even had a first place winner in the “humorous interpretation” category, where LAMS student Trevor Nickless did his interpretation of Eric K. Kimmel’s  “The Three Samurai Cats.”

Officials from the Los Alamos School District breathed a sigh of relief Thursday when they were granted a rare form of accreditation through “AdvancED” an accreditation service that specializes in accrediting entire school systems.

The officials, who included principals and some of the teachers from all of the LAPS schools as well as Superintendent Dr. Gene Schmidt and Assistant Superintendent Paula Dean, learned of the achievement at a special meeting Wednesday afternoon in Los Alamos High School’s ’Topper Theater.

For the past few days, an evaluation team from AdvancED had been roaming the halls of all of the schools, checking out classrooms, interviewing administrators, custodians, food servers, teachers, students and parents, sitting in on teaching sessions, checking out offices, cafeterias and even talking to people they met in the street.

Their mission?

The AdvancED officials wanted to see if the Los Alamos Public Schools deserved district-wide accreditation.

Members of the team included high ranking school officials from California, Minnesota and New Mexico. They were: Claudia Coughran, Dr. Clete Lipetzky, Ron Williams, Teresa Rowlison and Karen Dondelinger.

By next Wednesday afternoon, the Los Alamos Public School District should exactly know where it stands with “AdvancED,” an organization that accredits schools.

According to Assistant Superintendent Paula Dean, AdvancED officials won’t just be involved in accrediting Los Alamos High School, but the entire school district.

“For decades, only high schools have been accredited,” Dean said. “However, over the last couple of years, there’s been the possibility of having an entire district accredited and the agency that does the accrediting is called AdvancED.”

Dean added that there’s a possibility that LAPS could possibly be the first or the second public school district in New Mexico to achieve district-wide accreditation. District-wide accreditation is becoming more important to school districts as today’s students face stiffer academic competition not only nationally, but globally as well.

“District-wide accreditation would assure that the things that we do, such as professional development, instructional strategies and our curriculum are coordinated throughout the whole district,” Dean said. “It would also help us be recognized as a high quality district, because we are willing to apply for this higher level of scrutiny.”

School board members Melanie McKinley and Dawn Venhaus recently announced they will not be seeking re-election this year.

Both members cited professional and personal reasons for why they won’t be seeking another term on the board.

“Trying to balance teaching with raising four kids and serving on the school board, something had to give,” McKinley said. “It’s time for me to just step down for a while.”

When McKinley’s term is up in February, she will have completed one four-year stint.  According to McKinley, she came on to the board during a very tough time, just when the school system was heading into some rough financial times.

One of her proudest accomplishments she said was helping to guide the school system through that period.

“I’m really proud of the fact that we weathered the storm and that we made it through without our education system suffering,” she said, adding that she and her fellow board members created a real legacy of sound fiscal management.