Candidates running for school board answer questions

The Las Cruces branch of the League of Women Voters hosted a candidate forum Wednesday, September 24, 2025, at the Dr. Karen M. Trujillo Administration Complex to help introduce the candidates for the Las Cruces Public School Board to the public.

School Board incumbent Pamela Cort and her opponent Kristina Moore were at the forum alongside candidates for District 3, which includes incumbent Robert Wofford, Adrianna Maria Garcia, and Natalie Chadborn. 

District 1 candidate Patrick Nolan is running uncontested and was not at the forum.

The forum went over many topics surrounding schools including safety, bilingual education, book bans, and troubles facing students and teachers.

Regarding school safety, Wofford and Cort both highlighted the fact that the school board has been making attempts and making schools safer.

“We have put metal detectors into all of the high schools and middle schools and the administrators just this week have started to go out into the schools to help with the log jam things that are going on as we work to hire part-time security people to work those stations,” Wofford said.

Garcia showed support for these types of policies but additional steps that she would like to take if elected.

“I think a lot of these behaviors do start at home and I think that having parents more involved in having resources for these students for mental health and other things would be extremely helpful in reducing the amount of crime activity that is occurring in our schools,” Garcia said. 

When asked about bilingual education, Court drew on her experience as a French teacher to show the importance of this type of education.

“When we are teaching students in our classroom the validation of everyone's language and everyone’s culture, it helps students feel involved, it creates community in the classroom which, of course, helps students learn,” Cort said. 

In the last half hour of the forum, candidates were asked questions written by those in the audience. A question regarding book bans and political indoctrination in the classroom was posed to the candidates. Moore said she is opposed to politics of that sort in the classroom but there are some books that go too far.

“It would depend on what books they are talking about,” Moore said. “I have about 95 of them right here that I think are pornographic so I would want them out. I do not think they should be in the library.”  

Court, Wofford and Garcia all spoke against banning books from schools and Chadborn said that she believed that all books in the library should be “age appropriate” and there should be a process for parents' voices to be heard. 

When the group was asked about the biggest challenges that students face, all candidates agreed that cell phones need to come out of the classroom and Chadborn continued by saying kids need less to focus on at school.

“I would say that not only the social media issues and the bullying but I think that kids in all rooms are having trouble with just the chaos around them. There is just too much stuff that is going on in school that has nothing to do with reading, writing, math, history or just your basic stuff,” Chadborn said. 

A similar forum will be held for the City of Las Cruces Councilor races on September 30 at City Hall.

Election day will be on November 4.