Kirtland Middle School serves a large majority of Central Consolidated School District, including the cities of Kirtland, Ojo, Fruitland, Upper Fruitland, Waterflo, and the entire Harper Valley area. Central Consolidated School District is the largest school district land-wise in the state of New Mexico (Table 1). The school district has 7,000 students with 600 faculty and 600 staff members (centralschools.org). Central Consolidated School District serves a diverse community, which is also represented in the student body of KMS (Table 2). This demographic creates a unique situation because the majority of the ELL students are Navajo, or Diné. Throughout the district, 48% of the students are English Language Learners 17% qualify for the Special Education program (Table 3). One interesting statistic I discovered added a new facet to the population of students I am working with: approximately 31.9% of the population in Kirtland was below the poverty line according to the 2000 Census Bureau Community Fact Sheet.
Table One:
