About Us

Dolores Gonzales was a professor at the University of New Mexico and has been know as a “pioneer in bilingual education”. It was through her efforts that bilingual education had its beginning in New Mexico. She believed that children should learn in both English and Spanish so that our culture, history, traditions and, most importantly, the Spanish language would be preserved. The first bilingual program was at Coronado (now open) and when the new school was built, it was appropriately named after this outstanding educator. Since I knew her personally, it is extremely gratifying to me that I am a principal here at a school named for this loving, caring educator. Her vision of bilingual/multicultural education lives on in schools all over New Mexico. All of us here at Dolores Gonzales are very proud to be carrying on the legacy of “la doctora” as she was affectionately called.

Dolores Gonzales Elementary of comprised of 450 students in pre-school through 5th grade. About half of our students are from the Barales neighborhood and the other half come directly from Mexico. Our dual language and bilingual programs are designed to ensure that every one of our students is successful and academically challenged. Our staff is all highly qualified, with endorsements in ESL, bilingual education and some have dual endorsement. We implement a rigorous curriculum with all content taught in both English and Spanish in our dual language program. Student's instruction and curriculum planning is designed to ensure that students are critical thinkers and problem solvers.