Las Cruces Public Schools
Going Above and Beyond for Every Student, Every Day
Empowering Every Student to Excel, Create, and Thrive through Inclusive and Diverse Opportunities.
The LCPS Activities Department supports interscholastic clubs and organizations that are an extension of the classroom to support whole child education. We encourage students to participate in as many activities as possible and offer over 17 different activities within the middle schools and high schools that offer opportunities for students to learn the values of teamwork, leadership responsibilities, competition, diversity, and a sense of culture and community.
We are affiliated with the New Mexico Activities Association (NMAA).
Athletics
The LCPS Athletics Department offers a wide range athletic activities for middle school and high school students. As an extension of the classroom, these extracurricular activities are designed to promote learning, help teach life skills, and encourage good sportsmanship and citizenship.
Challenger Learning Center of Las Cruces
The Challenger Learning Center of Las Cruces offers an opportunity for students to become astronauts, scientists, and engineers as they solve real-world problems and share the thrill of discovery on missions through the solar system. Using space simulation and role-playing strategies, students bring their classroom studies to life and cultivate the skills needed for future success. We believe this to be a highly effective approach to strengthening knowledge and interest in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). LCPS sixth-grade students will be participating in an Expedition Mars Mission during this school year.
Challenger Learning Center of Las Cruces is the sole center in New Mexico and part of the dynamic and ever-growing international network of learning centers. We are dedicated to supporting the educational mission of the Space Shuttle Challenger’s final flight: to inspire, to explore, and to learn. Born out of the 1986 Space Shuttle tragedy, the learning center network is a triumph of the human spirit. Originally founded by the families of Challenger crewmembers, the learning centers serve as a living legacy to remember the brave, adventurous spirit of the crew and carry on their quest for knowledge. It will be a day that honors the past, engages your child in the present, and opens his/her eyes to the possibilities of the future.
K-12 Fine Arts
The philosophy of fine arts education in Las Cruces Public Schools is to provide a sequential, developmental fine arts curriculum which allows each student an opportunity to build skill and understanding through a wide variety of quality artistic experiences.
Fine arts have intrinsic value in the education of the whole child. In so much as the arts are now widely recognized as a separate and distinct form of knowledge, the district has a responsibility to provide instruction that will nurture this intelligence to its fullest potential in each child. The study of fine arts as distinct disciplines can and should provide an avenue for unique creative and artistic self-expression. Fine arts have value as a vehicle for understanding the history, society, culture and creative expressions of a wide variety of peoples. Participation in the arts fosters inter-personal skills, self-reliance, responsibility, team work, and has been shown to have a positive effect on school engagement and learning in other disciplines.
While public performance and exhibition are natural outgrowths of artistic instruction, it is not an end unto itself. The fine arts education provided to students in Las Cruces Public Schools is a balanced one where the artistic growth of each child is the ultimate goal and public demonstration is an expression of this growth.
