A school bus crosses over the Rio Ruidoso on Tuesday, Aug. 20. Educators feared the Ruidoso Municipal Schools District would lose a significant number of students at the start of the school year after natural disasters this summer. (Photo by Danielle Prokop / Source NM)
RUIDOSO – When Michelle Thurston was preparing for the school year to start in August, she said she and her fellow teachers were apprehensive about the number of students who would actually show up in their classrooms on the first day.
Natural disasters over the summer left many Ruidoso families without homes or in precarious living situations, and Thurston said educators worried this might mean the district would lose a significant number of students.
She said she was pleasantly surprised that only one student was removed from her roster.
“I thought those were pretty good numbers,” she said.
The South Fork and Salt fires that burned through thousands of acres of Lincoln National Forest land and destroyed over 900 Ruidoso area homes displaced many New Mexicans. The severe flooding that followed took out over 200 more homes.
The village was still in the midst of monsoon season and frequent rainfall when school started for most Ruidoso Municipal Schools students in mid-August.
“During the summer, we were very apprehensive about what the student count was going to be when we came back in August, and we really didn’t know until the first day,” said Becca Ferguson, superintendent of the district. “We had called parents during the summer to see if we could get ahold of them, but phone numbers change and things like that. So there were a number of parents that we were not able to contact.”
Ferguson said enrollment was down by 15 students for the 2024-2025 school year compared with the same time the previous year. Between the four schools in the district, there is a total enrollment of 1,805 students.
Charred trees line the roads between Ruidoso and Alto, burned in the South Fork Fire in June. (Photo by Danielle Prokop / Source NM)
“Fifteen students, of course in a district our size, is a significant financial impact, but it is not to the extreme concern that we had over the summer, where it could have been 200 or even more than that due to the fires and the flooding,” Ferguson said.
But, she added, kindergarten enrollment in the district is up. Ferguson said the enrollment numbers indicate that not as many families moved out of the Ruidoso area as educators originally predicted.
“That shows, to me, that we have a very resilient community that is going to stay and rebuild, and that Ruidoso is going to recover from this,” Ferguson said.
Candice Castillo, deputy secretary of Identity, Equity and Transformation at the state’s Public Education Department, said officials there have been in close contact with Ruidoso district leaders this semester. Backpacks and some school supplies were offered to students recently when Castillo visited the schools and at the “Cabinet in Your Community” event hosted this month by the governor’s office in Ruidoso.
“We understand that after the two natural disasters that they had to deal with, families are really focused on ensuring that they can rebuild,” Castillo said.
She said most, if not all, questions directed to state government representatives from residents involved updates on federal and state financial assistance — not necessarily school.
The Public Education Department is promoting its “Be Here NM” campaign to combat absenteeism throughout the state. Castillo said Ruidoso is one community the department is checking in with in particular, because of the summer upheaval.
Castillo said the district seems to be operating relatively normally this semester with few major impacts to attendance. However, as data is reviewed from this and future semesters, Castillo said the department will be looking for any trends that require additional state assistance to address.
“At least right now, based on what we have seen, the district has a pretty good system in place on moving along the school year. And just as anything in education, we’ll just have to wait to see what the data will show,” Castillo said.
School district implements weather protocols
Before students returned to the classroom, the district announced its weather protocols, which involved three levels of preparedness and action. Level 1 is Flood Watch, meaning weather conditions are favorable for flooding. Level 2 is Flood Warning, meaning flooding is occurring and schools are placed in shelter-in-place protocol. Level 3 is Flood Emergency where there is active flooding compromising roads and bridges. Shelter-in-place orders continue in Level 3.
Ferguson said she was in contact with the National Weather Service daily and released warnings as needed. This continues to be a standing call the district and other entities have each morning.
Ferguson said the district collaborated with the Village of Ruidoso, Ruidoso Police Department and the bus transportation contractor to develop the plans for flooding. In the few weeks since school started, the district put schools on a shelter-in-place order four times because of possible flooding, and released students from school early three times because of active or imminent flooding.
The bus transportation contractor also had to identify alternate routes in case roads were impassable and safe areas where buses could park and wait for water levels to recede.
“We’ve never had to do this before, so all of this was brand new to all of us here in Ruidoso,” Ferguson said.
She said the schools have been “very fortunate” because the most damage their buildings experienced was mud seeping into the parking lots.
A playset partially submerged under soils near an arroyo in Ruidoso captured Aug. 20. Ephemeral streams and arroyos in the Hondo Valley were awash in debris flows from heavy rains following the South Fork and Salt fires, carrying soils and ash down from the mountains. (Photo by Danielle Prokop / Source NM)
“So actually the best and safest place for students has been the schools,” Ferguson said.
She acknowledged that shelter-in-place orders, early dismissals and cancellations of extracurricular activities are “always going to be a disruption,” but the safety of everyone in the district takes precedence over “convenience.”
And attendance so far this semester is on par with “typical attendance rates,” Ferguson said.
Disruptions in the classroom
Michelle Thurston has taught in the district for over 10 years. She said the spring 2022 McBride Fire was “kind of when the trauma started” for students.
“We definitely had some kids that had some PTSD after that. But this is different because it was a little more devastating,” Thurston said.
She said she thinks early dismissal is better in some cases because everyone involved knows the plan for the day. When the school is sheltering in place or weather is being watched, teachers lose the attention of their students and quality instruction time.
“Once those clouds start rolling in … many of those kids start getting a little bit of anxiety anyways,” she said.
Parents also start experiencing some anxiety when storms roll into the area, Thurston said, and they check on their kids or pull them out of school early, despite there not being an official early dismissal. Thurston said in those cases, teachers turn on their radios to communicate with the front office, further interrupting class time.
“At least with the early dismissal, we know it’s happening, and you can just teach up until that time. And the kids usually stay in the classroom up until that time,” she said.
Lindsey Salas’ daughter is 15 and a sophomore at Ruidoso High School now, but she was in middle school during the McBride Fire. Salas said there has been some disappointment in extracurricular events being canceled because of weather, but the goal is mostly to “get back into a normal routine as quickly as possible.”
She said she hasn’t felt the need to keep her daughter home because of possible flood danger.
Salas’ family was one of the first to be evacuated over the summer because of the looming wildfires. She said their neighborhood survived, but surrounding areas were burned. And because they live on top of a hill they have only run into issues with flooding when trying to get home.
She said each time school is released early, she has to make arrangements for pickup, as her daughter is not quite driving by herself yet.
“I think we’re all just, again, trying to stay a community and work together and live through it,” Salas said.
Thurston said that following the erratic summer events, she thinks parents want kids to be in school and experience that normalcy.
“We need to give all of these families a little bit of grace,” she said.
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