At One APS School, a Holiday Meal That Meant So Much More

Nonprofit provided catered meal to students and staff at Juvenile Detention Center.

It was a typical New Mexico holiday meal–red and green chile chicken enchiladas, beans, rice and, of course, chips and salsa–but the lunch was anything but ordinary.

It was served before winter break to middle and high schoolers incarcerated at the Bernalillo County Juvenile Detention Center and to the corrections officers and the Albuquerque Public Schools teachers and staff who work with them. And it was provided by a community organization.

Students, clad in their jail uniforms and eating in small groups in shifts, savored the New Mexican meal. One boy held his hands together near his forehead as if in prayer before diving in.

“This time of year is very difficult for students here,” said Julie Gallegos, the head special education teacher at the JDC school. “We have students who have been here two-plus years that haven’t been home, so this makes a huge difference in their lives.”

More importantly, she said, the catered meal from Garcia’s shows the jailed students that someone from the community cares about them. It also makes a difference for the school and county staff.

“It’s hard on us too,” Gallegos said, referring to working in a jail during the holidays. “It makes a difference all the way around.”

Stronger Together, Never Alone, a nonprofit family support group started by mothers of incarcerated children, provided the meal. 

The number of students attending the JDC school fluctuates but is currently between 50 and 60. They range in age from 12 to over 18.

Students in the facility are accused of serious crimes, with some even facing homicide charges, but that doesn’t keep the staff from trying to make a difference in their lives.

“My job is not to punish them or to pass judgment for whatever it is that landed them here,” said Julie Mendoza, the general education department chair and inclusion English language arts teacher at the school. “That’s not my job. My job is to educate them. My job is to give them those tools and resources they need so that when they go back into other educational settings, they can be successful. 

“More often than not,” she added, “it’s hard for me to reconcile why they are here with who they are in my classroom.” 

For anyone wondering why there’s a school in the juvenile jail, Karen Wilkirson has a quick response.

“It’s the law,” she points out. “There’s mandatory compulsory attendance. Just because a kid gets locked up in jail does not exempt them from that.”

But for Wilkirson, a special education math teacher at the school, it goes way beyond that.

“It’s a transition for our kids to get back into the educational setting,” she said. “Sometimes the main thing we have to offer them is not academic but just to learn how to sit in school. Learn how to be a student, learn how to work for something, learn how to set goals and work for them and to give them a bridge to get back into their education when they leave here.” 

Everyone needs an education, she said.  

“And they have to have some sense that they can go back to school and succeed,” Wilkirson added. “Sometimes when they first come here they don’t have that sense. They don’t go to school some of them haven’t been in school for many years.”