Question 4: What are your thoughts regarding the highly successful My Water, My Watershed program that is an experiential science-based education program for fourth and fifth grade Santa Fe Public School students?
Peter Ives:
Early education of our students about the watershed and its significance to the City of Santa Fe is critical and requires continued support. It has been my pleasure to support continued funding of the program and to work with the Watershed Association on this over the years that I have served on City Council.
Ron Trujillo:
I think that this is an outstanding program which shows how environmental science can be made relevant to the youth of the community by showing them how the conclusions of this type of scientific investigation can directly affect their lives.
Joseph Maestas:
This special SFPS school program is free and funded by the City of Santa Fe. It’s a three-day program comprised of: 1) a one-hour classroom session devoted to planning a field visit to the city’s upper watershed; 2) a full-day field trip to the upper watershed to practice observation and data collection (sampling macroinvertebrates in the Santa Fe River); and 3) one-hour debrief on the field visit and re-cap of where our water comes from. This program is quite consistent with our water conservation public education campaign where school students are a major constituency in our community with regard to understanding our water issues and to eventually be responsible stewards of our precious, limited supply of water.
Alan Webber:
I applaud the program. As a community, and as nation, education of our children on issues that will determine the quality of their life is critical.
Kate Noble:
Yes! This is an excellent program. This program is sometimes the first chance for some children to experience anything close to the natural world— a place without houses and cars and stores. In addition, science-based education is extremely important, and we need to expand experiential learning opportunities. I wholeheartedly support reinstating City support for this program to the level of the number of classes that were being served before as soon as possible, and working on expanding the program to serve more students.
*Note: These questions were submitted for distribution by the individual members of the Board of Directors of the Santa Fe Watershed Association. The questions and the resulting answers are posted as they were submitted and were not edited prior to this posting. The order of the responses in the survey, were in the order that they were received by us. The Santa Fe Watershed Association does not endorse any one candidate for any of the offices being contested. The information is deemed reliable but cannot be guaranteed.