New Principal Adds 90% Attendance Policy

By John Earp

At the meeting of the Jal School Board this past Monday, during the principal’s and superintendent’s reports, Jal High School Principal Buddy Little noted an addition to the student handbook concerning attendance. Last year, according to Little, there was no requirement that students attend a certain number of days of school in order to get credit. Previous to this coming school year (2024-2025) the only policy was that students had 10 days to make up missed assignments, but Little also noted that it was up to the teacher how strict they wanted to enforce this rule, and that it was never consistently upheld by the teachers. He said, “This one has a little more bite to it.”

Little, reading the superintendent’s report for the board, mentioned that the elementary and high school swimming summer student workers were doing an excellent job, adding that the other summer workers were also doing well.

Superintendent Brian Snider, attending the meeting via remote video, mentioned that the swimming pool is running very well this summer, noting that Mrs. Christy Little has maintained “an order that wasn’t there about safety, because safety around a swimming pool is very important.” The last day for summer swimming at the Jal Aquatic Center is July the 27^th.

The board will be conducting its midyear review of Mr. Snider’s job performance as superintendent on August the 12^th. In his principal’s report, Little mentioned that the district has hired Mr. Gary Simmons, who currently lives in Ruidoso and retired the year before last from Whiteface, TX, where he had coached for 14 years. He will be the new girls’ basketball coach at Jal High. Little said that Simmons has been coach of the year five times, and his teams have made it to regional finals once and area finals once, which he noted was a tremendous achievement for a coach in the panhandle region of Texas. Simmons graduated from Jal High School in 1979, according to Little. Assisting Simmons will be Paulean Gonzalez, who is currently head girls’ basketball coach at Fort Hancock, TX. Little said the goal is to hopefully have some consistency for the girls’ basketball team, which has unfortunately had a different coach every year over the past few years.

Towards the end of his principal’s report, Mr. Little mentioned that the new varsity football coach is bringing a strong emphasis on an “air raid” type of passing game, which will be quite different from the option-dominated running game that was standard under Coach Dusty Giles’ tenure. He said it will be really fun to watch.

Board Member Rene Cervantes asked about a golf program for kids. Little said “The last update I had on that was that there wasn’t a lot of interest in the high school, but that they were going to look at the younger kids.” Mr. Homer is the golf coach. Snider said that both golf and baseball could really benefit from a youth sports program. Cervantes said he was unable to get parents to work together on supporting a 5^th through 7^th grade program, when some 8^th graders who wanted to play wouldn’t be allowed to play with the 5^th through 7^th.