{"id":24349,"date":"2024-12-19T17:28:06","date_gmt":"2024-12-20T00:28:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/mchs-student-selected-for-new-mexico-lorenzo-de-zavala-leadership-program\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:52:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:52:15","slug":"mchs-student-selected-for-new-mexico-lorenzo-de-zavala-leadership-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/mchs-student-selected-for-new-mexico-lorenzo-de-zavala-leadership-program\/","title":{"rendered":"MCHS student selected for New Mexico Lorenzo De Zavala Leadership Program"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Cortez
Cortez school board members declared a critical teacher shortage, which is affecting schools in the district, including Montezuma-Cortez High School.<\/span>Sam Green\/The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Montezuma-Cortez High School student Danica Hope House has been selected to participate in the New Mexico Lorenzo De Zavala Leadership Program.<\/p>\n

House was one out of 150 students chosen to be part of the program, according to School District RE-1.<\/p>\n

The program was founded by Ernesto Niete and his wife, Gloria de Leon, who also cofounded the National Hispanic Institute. The LDZ program is a youth legislative session dedicated to Lorenzo De Zavala, a prominent Mexican American who signed the Texas Declaration of Independence in the early 1800s.<\/p>\n

Though the program started small, it has expanded to Texas, Colorado, New Mexico and Washington, D.C., according to last year\u2019s LDZ junior counselor Ellie Burris.<\/p>\n

Students are chosen through an application process that is primarily focused on their academic achievements and their character qualities. They also must be on a college-bound program. They do accept students who are not going to college.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe also look at kids who go into trade schools and go into specialized program. Those kids are also very welcome,\u201d Burris said.<\/p>\n

Burris also explained how a student from a Colorado high school could participate in a program for New Mexico high schools.<\/p>\n

Though the program says it is for New Mexico students, Burris explained that also includes tribes that reside in parts of New Mexico and pay New Mexico taxes. Since the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe stretches into New Mexico, students who are living in those tribal areas are able to be part of the program.<\/p>\n

\u201cGloria de Leon, the cofounder, went to UNM and was like, \u2018We have these kids. They\u2019re very, very bright. We have a lot of support for them from the superintendent to the tribal members and the tribal council,\u2019\u201d Burris said. \u201cThe whole point of the program is to get these young generations, specifically minorities, into these positions of realizing they\u2019re the future and they aren\u2019t defined by who they are, but defined by what they can do with these opportunities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Besides MCHS, students from Centennial High School, East Mountain High School, Eldorado High School, Farmington High School, Gadsden High School, New Mexico Military Institute, Organ Mountain High School and West Mesa High School were selected for the program.<\/p>\n

More information about LDZ can be found online<\/a> at www.nationalhispanicinstitute.org.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

150 students are selected to participate in the program<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16084,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,28,60,36,216,138,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-24349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-headlines","tag-montezuma-county","tag-montezuma-cortez-high-school","tag-montezuma-cortez-school-district-re-1","tag-new-mexico","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24349"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78499,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24349\/revisions\/78499"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24349"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=24349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}