New year, NEW SCHOOL

Latest APS school focuses on ‘blended learning’

With new backpacks, and an abundance of tissues and wet wipes, students and their parents hurried into Tres Volcanes Community Collaborative School, a new Albuquerque Public Schools facility that officially opened Monday morning.

Kate Roybal is eager to be sending her first-grader, Cash, to school, saying she was excited when she heard a new school came to her district.

Roybal said she got the 6-year-old’s things ready for class in advance to make Monday morning a little bit less stressful and felt ready the morning of.

Cash was among about 600 students in

kindergarten through sixth grade who are attending the new school, according to APS.

And the district said that could grow to be up to 1,600 K-8 students in the future.

Tres Volcanes is among most other schools across the district that began the new school year Monday.

“The first day of school is so exciting,” Superintendent Raquel Reedy said, adding all the kids have seemed jovial to get back into the classroom.

“This is the kind of thing going on through the district,” she said

APS is aiming for Tres Volcanes to help with overcrowding at Jimmy Carter Middle School, and Painted Sky and S.R. Marmon elementaries.

Sonya Lopez’s 8-year-old was previously going to S.R. Marmon, which Lopez says she enjoyed. So she was a little nervous to send third-grader Jaycee Vallo to a new place.

But after she toured it and learned about the curriculum’s focus on technology, she knew it was going to be a good fit, adding Jaycee seemed excited by the new environment when she was dropped off Monday morning.

According to APS, the school focuses on “blended learning with an emphasis on technology.”

“Its modern design lends itself to collaborative and project-based learning,” the district wrote in a news release.

That’s part of the reason 11-year-old Jaivon Tsose, who is in sixth grade, is thrilled to start school at Tres Volcanes, telling the Journal he is excited for the new classrooms and science class.

The $50 million school located near Interstate 40 and 98th Street on the West Side has 74 classrooms, multiple gyms and a multi-media room.

GREG SORBER/ JOURNAL Jonathan Perez Barrera, 11, left, and David Perez Barrera, 9, wait for school to start Monday at the new Tres Volcanes Community Collaborative School.

Students arrive on the first day of the school year at the new $50 million Tres Volcanes Community Collaborative School on Monday near I-40 and 98th Street on the West Side.