Linda Quintana Martinez, principal of Taos Middle School, told the Taos Municipal Schools board on Oct. 9 that the campus has seen measurable gains in math and is expanding interventions and restorative practices to address behavior and learning gaps.

"At the beginning of the 24-25 school year, Dr. Layton met with all principals and asked us to set goals for our math and reading," Principal Quintana Martinez said. She reported that the school set a reading growth goal of 3 percentage points and a math goal of three points; math increased from a baseline of 8 to 19 on the district measure — an 11-point gain. Quintana Martinez said reading scores remained essentially unchanged this year, and she attributed that in part to a long-term substitute in seventh-grade language arts.

Quintana Martinez described current interventions: every student has a 20-minute daily advisory dedicated to I‑Ready practice (Mondays/Wednesdays for math; Tuesdays/Thursdays for reading); students are placed at individualized levels after a diagnostic, and intervention courses (Math 180, Read 180) serve many students who are multiple grade levels below expectations. On beginning-of-year i‑Ready placement, the principal said the school had "nobody above grade level," "20 students at grade level" and many students one to two grade levels below.

School leaders also reported changes in discipline. Quintana Martinez said assistant principal Mister Chavez handles the majority of discipline and that the district is adopting restorative practices and planning to add those to the discipline matrix so consequences are corrective rather than solely punitive. "Last September we had about 164 discipline write-ups in Panorama; this September we had 67," she said, noting the decline as an early sign the approach is reducing incidents.

The principal described operational steps intended to support instruction and family engagement: classroom walkthrough goals for administrators, use of New Mexico Elevate evaluation rubrics, student clubs (STEAM, pottery, electric car), and community partnerships such as Lions Club vision screening (292 students screened; 76 referred for glasses). Quintana Martinez said teachers are using district-adopted curriculum materials as the primary instruction source and that staff receive actionable feedback tied to growth areas.

Quintana Martinez also described digital-monitoring tools. The school uses Securly to view students' browser activity during advisory; she said she occasionally locks screens remotely when students go to off-task sites. The school uses Panorama to document both positive and negative behaviors and parent contacts, a practice Quintana Martinez called a "game changer" for parent conferences and follow-up.

Board members asked about vaping, reintegration after suspensions and whether restorative practices will be added to a districtwide discipline matrix. Quintana Martinez said the district has a tiered progressive discipline system and that the district is working to standardize restorative responses across schools; for nicotine vaping the district is emphasizing education and programming, while THC possession remains an automatic suspension under district policy.

Quintana Martinez closed by saying she will include more detail in the next campus leadership board report and invited board members to review the school’s walkthrough and intervention data.