The Las Cruces Public Schools Board of Education Tuesday evening approved district-wide boundary changes.
Las Cruces Public Schools launched its plan to redraw school attendance zones in August, coinciding with the opening of the new Columbia Elementary School for the 2025-2026 school year. On Tuesday evening, the LCPS board approved boundary changes that will affect elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools for the next school year, with feedback from town hall meetings and surveys helping to shape the board’s final decisions.
For elementary schools, Option 1 was selected by the board as the new boundary map. Kelly Jameson, Director of Communications for Las Cruces Public Schools, explained that option and which schools will be impacted.
“It will impact Fair Acres (Elementary) primarily, because it will draw that boundary line at I-10,” she said. “It will pull some of those students into Fair Acres. It will provide for some added growth. It will divert more students to Fair Acres. We just, through bond initiatives, did a major expansion job at Fair Acres Elementary School, so they have a capacity for those students coming in.
“But again, that option addressed the East Mesa schools. And that was another goal of the board, which was to alleviate overcrowding on those East Mesa campuses.”
For middle school boundaries, the board chose Option 3.
“That will impact Camino Real Middle School, which is our most populated school right now,” Jameson said. “It maintains a balanced distribution of students across all middle schools, alleviates some overcrowding at Camino Real, diverts some students to Zia Middle School, and provides for future growth.”
For high schools, the board voted for Option 3 Revised. Jameson explained how this option differs from Option 3.
“What Option 3 Revised did was, it accomplished the goal of the board, which was to balance the populations in four comprehensive high schools, which was Mayfield, Organ Mountain, Centennial, and Las Cruces High School,” said Jameson. “Option 3, as it was first presented, was a little challenging for Las Cruces High School. And there were some concerns that it might have left that school in a situation like Mayfield, where it was stagnant; there might not have been some opportunity for growth. So the revised version took some extra neighborhoods and diverted them to Las Cruces High School.”
Jameson said that the rollout of the revised attendance zones will begin in January with a communications plan, beginning with a letter to the students from their schools with first step instructions.
“So what we do right now is we take the vote of the board, we geocode our maps, and that will tell us who goes to what school, where you ended up in the split,” she said. “There will be some transfer opportunities. If they are rostered in an activity, those students will be given some consideration. So there’s a multi-faceted communication plan that will hopefully alleviate some concerns of parents who might not know where their students are going to go. We’re gong to be posting those maps on our website, so parents will have a general idea of where these boundary lines have been drawn.”
Before the school board approved the zoning options, Sherley O’Brien, Chief of Student Services and Community Relations, gave a presentation that displayed not only the various zoning options, but also the results of a survey regarding the redistricting plan. On the question of what was the biggest concern respondents had about redistricting for their family, the number one concern was impact on their children’s social and emotional well-being, followed by transportation and logistics, with continuity and stability in education coming in third.
