City: Albuquerque, NM

Category: Relocation

Telephone: (505) 243-6659

Address: 1801 Central Avenue NW

Description: Manzano Day School, founded in 1938, teaches children from prekindergarten (four years old) to fifth grade. Children are educated on a six-acre campus near Old Town, with adobe buildings, gardens, and placitas (enclosed patios or courtyards), and an amphitheater. There is a maximum of 18 students to a class, and more than half the teachers have been with the school for over a decade. Traditional subjects are taught using new approaches, such as the F.A.S.T. Reading Program (Foundations of Analysis, Synthesis and Translation) and Mel Levine’s Schools Attuned program. The core curriculum of reading, writing, math, social studies, and science is accompanied by cocurricular subjects, including visual arts, technology, Spanish, music and performing arts, physical education, environmental studies, and library studies. Students take several field trips a year, including one between one and three days annually at Manzano’s Fenton Ranch in the Jemez Mountains, 80 miles northwest of Albuquerque. Homesteaded in the 1800s, the ranch, with residential dormitories, is part of Manzano’s campus and is used for environmental education. This is the only elementary school in Albuquerque accredited by the Independent Schools Association of the Southwest (a voluntary membership organization), in addition to the New Mexico State Department of Education. The application process for all ages includes a school visit and testing or evaluations.