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Socorro High School is trying to find new ways to support students. According to the principal, a quarter of the school’s students are struggling.

The school is on the path to becoming a community school. Community schools provide “expanded learning time and social and health services with community partners,” according to the New Mexico Public Education Department website. The school has already applied for a community school grant, and is awaiting funding.

A community school would allow them to meet the needs of families at the school instead of referring them to someone else, Socorro High School principal Christine Peguero told the district’s school board at their December meeting.

“I get very discouraged when we have families come in and we say, ‘it’s very easy, you just contact this person,’ and you give them a phone number.”

The Coordinated Community Response person already brings some wrap-around services into the school. Becoming a community school would push that effort further. Peguero would also like to see mentors, from within the school or from the community, paired with students.

So far this school year, five students have been hospitalized, 18 students are considered homeless and, based on discipline referrals, Peguero estimates that a quarter of the student population is struggling.

“I’d say we’re looking to about close to a quarter of our population that are really struggling, and I hate saying that, but it is the truth. I have a social worker who works with them and she’s swamped. I also work with Project Aware.”

Drug use is one of the issues students are dealing with.

“We have kids who are self-medicating, so there’s a lot of drug use,” Peguero said.

Some of the students are also dealing with grief.

“We’ve got COVID right and all the effects of COVID, but grief. A lot of them are coming up on one-year anniversaries. A lot of them are very depressed, and they don’t know how to get out of it. We just have one thing after the next, and these kids, they’re in school because they need the education, want the education, but it’s hard for them to even get there because they’re dealing with so many other things in their lives right now.”

The graduation rate is similar to what it’s been in the past. Of 99 seniors, six will not graduate, and 17 are on the bubble, where they may or may not graduate, said Peguero. She’d like to pair those students with a mentor in the school or community, who can give them advice or a direction to go in.

“You may not know Algebra II, but you do know the people that may be able to help them,” said Peguero.

Cathy Cook | El Defensor Chieftain Editor