Penasco Independent School District

A Peñasco education is rooted in school and community pride. Our population is 81% Hispanic, 11% Native, 4% Anglo, 4% other. We celebrate our community’s diverse tradition(s), culture(s), and values. We bring unity to the school and community as we cultivate a positive and engaging learning environment, empowering students to explore and connect to the larger world. Many of our traditions and cultures focus on food, cooking, and farming, and, to create a positive and engaging learning environment, our district has created a project-based learning initiative, of which gardening and the culinary arts are a part.

We want our students to learn the process of preparing food from farm to table. We will do this through engaging teachers, classrooms and students with garden boxes, building and maintaining greenhouses on campus and exploring hydroponics.

FoodCorps members at Farmington Municipal Schools are a part of a New Mexico Cohort that includes 10 members in 4 difference communities across the state.

Partner sites in New Mexico are located in the occupied territories of Farmington, Peñasco, Las Cruces, and Anthony. We acknowledge and seek to continually honor that all land within the present borders of New Mexico were originally entrusted and stewarded by Indigenous Peoples. Through a journey of cultural humility, we serve at each site with the knowledge that each of these geographical and cultural boundaries have been constructed as a result of unjust historical events. New Mexico prides itself on our population, which consists of a majority of People of Color, and the deep well of cultural assets each ethnic group adds to our communities. As a result of racist ideologies and concurrent policies that have systematically marginalized these populations, New Mexico currently has the lowest quality of life for children and some of the highest hunger and poverty rates in the nation. With this historical pretext and a systems change approach as the foundation, FoodCorps members will engage with children, families and communities to offer food education through a decolonial, equitable, anti-racist lens with support from site supervisors, community, and state staff.