Tularosa Municipal Schools Superintendent retiring after 32 years

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Nicole Maxwell, Wochit

In an office next to the Tularosa Red Brick School, Brenda Vigil, the superintendent of Tularosa Municipal Schools, sat at her desk while a construction team worked outside.

With construction machinery buzzing and pounding, Vigil pondered her 32 years as an educator and school administrator as she prepared for her June 30th retirement.

Vigil has taught at Tularosa Schools since 1989 when she was a language teacher at Tularosa High School.

“I had children in schools because I didn’t really start secondary school until later, I had a family. Seeing them in school and the challenges they were facing, I decided that I would become an educator,” said Vigil.

Vigil taught at Tularosa High School for about five and a half years before being promoted to Assistant Principal at Tularosa High School in the 1994-1995 semester.

She served as the deputy headmistress for a semester before the then headmaster left the school and she was appointed headmistress of Tularosa High School.

In the fall of 2001, she was appointed headmistress of the Tularosa Municipal Schools and has remained in that position ever since.

As for her retirement, Vigil said her only plan is to enjoy her.

“Hopefully I’ll do some more educational work, but that will be a little later,” said Vigil. “Right now I just want to enjoy retirement a little, see what it is like.”

The job of a superintendent, like the job of a director, is a full-time, everyday affair, Vigil said.

“You work all the time, even when you’re on vacation, when you’re on sick leave, you’re still tied to the job,” Vigil said. “I’m looking forward to having some time, this is my time.”

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However, Vigil will miss being superintendent.

“I love my children, I love my employees, Tularosa has always been a great place to work,” said Vigil. “I take pride in putting children and employees above everything else.”

In addition to her students, Vigil has four children, seven grandchildren and eleven great-grandchildren.

Witness the change

During her time as an educator, Vigil saw many changes at the state level and in the New Mexico State Department of Education.

She witnessed the change of New Mexico’s schools, represented by a state superintendent who moved to a cabinet secretary.

She also had to respond to the No Child Left Behind program and the PARCC test before it was abolished.

“What I saw in education is that we come down a path and you evaluate student performance and ability and then we change what we do and you are back at the beginning,” Vigil said. “It makes it a little difficult and then last year with COVID-19 was extremely stressful for everyone.”

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Tularosa municipal schools learned virtually from April 2020 to April 2021, with hybrid learning starting from February 2021.

“We have seen some families (COVID-19) have had a major impact. Overall, we didn’t have many COVID-19 cases in schools, but we were also out of the way, ”Vigil said.

As of March 2020, Tularosa had 300 positive COVID-19 cases as of June 16, according to the New Mexico Department of Health.

“We didn’t try to go back in the fall (of 2020) but it was too unknown at the time,” Vigil said.

Vigil was also a member of the Superintendent’s Association and co-chaired the Alliance of Education at New Mexico State University.

She is originally from Sutton, West Virginia, but spent most of her education in California as her father was with the US Air Force.

Vigil’s father was stationed at Holloman Air Force Base in 1963 and later retired from there.

The family moved to Tularosa and stayed.

Nicole Maxwell can be contacted by email at nmaxwell@alamogordonews.com, by phone at 575-415-6605, or on Twitter at @nicmaxreporter.

source https://collegeeducationnewsllc.com/tularosa-municipal-schools-superintendent-retiring-after-32-years/