Mr. Editor:

Recently it was reported that New Mexico ranks 49^e in child welfare in the nation and 50th in school results. Things are not going well in the Land of Enchantments.

Even Los Alamos public schools have struggled in the past 19 months of the Covid shutdown, school crisis and trying to get back to normal. My own children have declined considerably since March 2020 and struggle every day to relearn, learn and remember their lessons. We have so much work to do in our families and schools to catch up with our children and recover from the COVID disruption.

This is why our election to the school board this year is so important. As the race for school boards intensifies, we must ask ourselves individually and as a community what we expect from our board and its members. With four of the five seats open, it is imperative that our board members are skilled, informed and focused on the real issues facing LAPS.

However, it appears that a few of the school board candidates and their substitutes have moved away from the real issues our schools face and are content to talk about gender and identity politics. If you were to assess what the needs of Los Alamos public schools are by reading only letters to the editor, you would think the only problem our schools face is with LGBT students.

I don’t want to downplay the struggles of these kids, because they are real struggles, but there are a lot of students with a variety of issues in our schools who also need our attention: kids with ED. feeding, children in abusive relationships, children from broken homes, children from traditional homes, religious children, atheist children, children with learning disabilities, children who hide in plain sight, children who just want to be kids, kids with drug addiction and addiction, kids who engage in self-harm (cutting, etc.), kids who are bullied by their peers, kids who are bullied by their teachers, kids who are disruptive, kids who are shy and may lack social skills and confidence, and the list could go on and on. Are their needs not important to our school board and the district?

I would like applicants to focus on helping all of our students and teachers to recover from the learning loss related to COVID, choosing a new superintendent, choosing balanced and quality educational materials that will benefit everyone students, and helping LAPS develop strategies for better communication and more transparency between teachers and parents; not “education and information… about what it means to explore gender and gender identity”.

Conversations about morality, relationships, sexuality, and sexual and gender identities are the responsibility of parents and should be left to parents to be discussed in the safety and structure of the home. To my fellow parents, please have these difficult conversations with your children, they need to be taught by you. Be their first stop when tough questions arise. Going forward, let’s focus on the issues at stake and leave identity politics at the door.

Truly,
Joyce Anderson
Los Allamos