Aztec's Lydia Rippey Elementary School earns prestigious Blue Ribbon School Award

• Lydia Rippey was one of three schools in New Mexico to be named a National Blue Ribbon School this year.
• Superintendent Kevin Summers says this marks only the fifth time a San Juan County school has made the list.
• The Lydia Rippey campus is home to students in prekindergarten through third grade.

Now that one of his schools has been designated as one of the country’s top-performing institutions by the federal government, Aztec Municipal School District Superintendent Kevin Summers has one issue on his mind — how does he export that school’s success to the other schools in his district?

“That’s exactly the right question,” Summers said Thursday, two days after his district’s Lydia Rippey Elementary School became the first school in the district — and just the fifth in San Juan County — to be named a National Blue Ribbon School by the U.S. Department of Education. “An award like this, an honor so prestigious, has the potential to divide our campuses. But I think our community is so tight knit, I think our other schools are going to want to leverage this award and say, ‘We want to do this, too.’”

Lydia Rippey joined just two other New Mexico schools — Lincoln Elementary School in Gallup and Monte Vista Elementary School in Albuquerque — and 352 other schools nationwide in receiving the award. According to a news release announcing the winners, the winning schools are honored for their exemplary high performance, specifically their overall academic excellence or their progress in closing achievement gaps.

Summers said that Lydia Rippey became his district’s first National Blue Ribbon School was a tremendous honor, especially since the program is in its 40th year. He said the Farmington Municipal School District has had three schools on the list in the past, and the Bloomfield School District has made the list once.

“It’s a very, very prestigious, and we’re delighted to have gotten it,” he said.

The school’s principal, Samantha Nelson, said her school’s inclusion on this year’s list was big news at the school earlier this week.

“The excitement was pretty palpable throughout our building,” she said.

Nelson, who is in her first semester as principal at the school, joked about how the award has allowed her to begin her tenure with a bang — and some high expectations for the future.

“No pressure, no pressure,” she said, laughing.

In a statement included in the news release announcing the winners, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham noted it was a concerted effort by everyone involved with the schools that led to the honors.

“I want to congratulate these teachers, administrators, students, and their families on their hard work to achieve Blue Ribbon status,” she said. “This is what we can accomplish when we focus on supporting educators and creating classroom environments that make learning accessible for all students.”

Arsenio Romero, secretary of New Mexico’s Public Education Department, also issued a statement in the news release.

“We could not be prouder of our Blue Ribbon Schools this year and the success of each school is rooted in their ties to community, strong leadership and resilience,” he said. “Each school offers us something to be inspired by and something to aspire to.”

Despite the youth of its students — the Lydia Rippey campus is home to those in prekindergarten through third grade — school officials make a point of already steering them toward college or career pathways. Summers said the district has developed 11 such pathways and has focused for the last two years on challenging its high school students to choose from those pathways by participating in an ambitious paid internship program that involves dozens of local businesses or government entities.

The superintendent said every Friday at Lydia Rippey is devoted to Career and Technical Education Day, when students are exposed to speakers or activities designed to broaden their horizons and encourage them to think about what they’d like to do with their life.

Just recently, he said, school officials brought in an archaeologist to deliver a presentation for students, taking advantage of the fact that the school is within shouting distance of Aztec Ruins National Monument. That went over so well that, a week later, they arranged for students to participate in an archaeological dig, he said.

Summers said it is precisely those kinds of activities that make Lydia Rippey a school worthy of the honor it received this week.

“One of the things Lydia Rippey does that makes it great, in comparison to other schools, is, it offers students a lot of choices based on what (educators) think the students might be interested in doing,” he said.

Nelson said she sees no reason why her school’s success can’t be duplicated at other schools across the district.

“If anything, yes, it transcends across our community,” she said. “We have a tight-knit, small community. It really can transcend not only the halls of our building but all the other schools in the district. I think there’s going to be a strong desire to embrace it.”

Nelson credited her staff for its work in helping Lydia Rippey’s approximately 350 students succeed, but she said it is the children who deserve just as much credit.

“They really are the pillar of what we get to look forward to as the future,” she said.

Mike Easterling can be reached at 505-564-4610 ormeasterling@daily-times.com. Support local journalism with a digital subscription: http://bit.ly/2I6TU0e.