The Las Cruces City Council held a work session on Monday, February 23, 2026, at approximately 1 PM, presided over by Mayor Eric Enriquez. The session featured three major presentations: an update on the Las Cruces Public Schools Community Schools Partnership, an update on the Amador Hotel restoration project, and the ninth semi-annual police audit report by the OIR Group. No formal votes were taken on substantive items; the work session concluded with a unanimous motion to adjourn.
Good afternoon. Uh welcome to our work session. Today is Monday, February twenty-third, twenty twenty-six. It's approximately one PM. I am Mayor Eric Enriquez. We'll start with a moment of science. Yeah, if you'll join me in a moment of silence for our military personnel, our police and fire that protect us locally, and to all our city employees that provide the service they do for our city. If you'll join me in the pledge. What's that? Usually I can see them. Sorry. I thought I was gonna have to go to the community managers. But see, usually when I pull them up, I can't see them there because they're in the wrong. There we go. Great. Thank you very much. All right. Good afternoon, Mayor and City Council. Carol Bray, Director of the Quality of Life Department. And uh I am here. We are bringing actually two partnerships to you today that uh have organizations that we work very closely with. And first is the uh Las Cruces Public Schools Community Schools partnership that we participate in. Uh, very pleased to uh I have been participating in these meetings as a partner. Uh we talk about what's happening with the community schools, all their wonderful programs and services, and how we contribute through our museum and library programs that we do jointly with them as well. Uh want to recognize that uh Councillor McClure is going to be the incoming vice chair, I believe, probably next month if all goes well. And uh also we want to thank Councillor Harris for his participation uh on the partnership board, and Mayor Enriquez has appointed himself to the partnership board, and we're very happy about that as well. Uh I am pleased to introduce Johnny Rivera, who's the community schools manager, and uh has been wonderful to work with over this past what year and a half or so that you've had the position. And uh he agreed to come and talk about give you an update on what's happening with the community schools partnership and all the wonderful things they're doing. So I will turn things over to Johnny, and uh you can uh just forward the yes, it should work fine. Good afternoon, everyone. Good afternoon, city manager, mayor, city council members. Thank you for having me. Um, it's a pleasure to be here and report out what's going on with our our partnership that we've had over the last few years. Um before I get started, I just want to say thank you to our first responders to Chief Story and Chief McDaniels. Thank you, gentlemen, for your service. We appreciate you all and all the hard work you all do. So, our meeting today, we will discuss community schools. Uh purpose today, really just want to give an education on what is a community school and the origin story. We'll talk about the history of community schools, how many school sites we have, along with the outputs and outcomes that we've identified as priorities for community schools, how we've been able to capture that information and data and talk about it in a practical sense, on top of strategic planning for the future of community schools. What is a community school? And a community school is a whole child comprehensive approach in how we address the whole child with supporting their learning outcomes, developing healthy uh relationships at a campus, but also supporting the staff and the family members that are part of our community schools. In addition to providing those academic components, we also want to provide uh resources and support systems for our families and for people of the community in case they need any types of supports or needs that they need addressed from the community that's not closely available to them in proximity and provide them to the campuses that they're a part of. So, what makes up a community school? Well, we have uh six key practices, and across the nation and across the state, we have either the six key practices or the four pillars of community schools. Uh here in New Mexico, here locally, we have the six key practices, and for us to implement these six key practices, we want to establish enabling conditions. And the enabling conditions we want to build on our campuses is developing trusting relationships with everyone that's a part of our campus. We also want to develop a shared vision with everyone that's participating with the campus. Actionable data to talk about, and also develop inclusive decision decision making platforms. Once we've established those uh the climate for community schools, we can talk about the six key practices, and the first one I'll talk about is powerful student and family engagement. That piece is transitioning from a transactional relationship with our students and our families and transitioning into a co-creative space where our students and their families can come to a space together and develop the types of uh support systems they want to see on their campuses.