Ruben Archuleta got onto the Española Public Schools Board of Education because he couldn't get anybody to give him paint. He was PTA president at his son's elementary school, and every summer about 20 parents would gather to paint, touch up the building, flip burgers, and make a day of it. The labor was free. Ruben just needed supplies. He called. He emailed. He called some more. Nothing. Finally, he complained to his mother, who worked as head cook at Española Valley High School. Her advice was succinct: "Do something about it." So he did. Eleven years later, Ruben is the board's longest-serving member and its president, and, fittingly, director of radiology at the local hospital, having once been an assistant coach on the first ever boys state championship team at EVHS.

Around the table with him sit members whose careers and reasons for serving vary considerably. Katrina Martinez spent 25 years in human resources for the State of New Mexico. Dale Salazar runs Leroy's Excavating Incorporated, a paving and excavation business his father, Leroy, founded in 1983; Dale has run it as president since his father passed away in 2001. Justin Salazar-Torrez brings an operations background and has worked in public service since he was 14, a record that extends well beyond Española itself: he's served as president of the National Hispanic Council within the National School Board Association, sat on the executive board of the National Association of Latino Elected Officials, and once won a competitive national election against a candidate from California, "a little guy from Española," as he put it, suddenly at a national table. As a Regent at Northern New Mexico College, he's also higilelped push the college's dual-credit enrollment to roughly 300 students, among the highest rates around.

Most of them are products of the community they now serve, and each came to the board because watching from the sidelines stopped feeling sufficient. Katrina had spent years volunteering in her kids' schools. "I want to see things done," she said. "Instead of just saying I want to see things, I thought, well, I might as well put myself out there."

That willingness to step forward matters right now. The board has called for a special audit examining not just district operations, but the board itself. "Investigate all of us," Ruben said. "Go through what you need to do." It isn't comfortable work, but Ruben says problems that persist too long ultimately hurt kids, and this board wants them found, fixed, and prevented from happening again. "If the board is doing something wrong," he said, "we need to know we're doing something wrong." The word that kept surfacing was transparency. There's something notable about elected officials placing themselves under the same microscope they're asking others to stand beneath, and listening to them, accountability and affection didn't feel like competing ideas. They seemed to come from the same place.

These people love Española. Ask what makes the Valley special and the conversation shifts immediately. "Everybody's got everybody's back here in this Valley," Justin said. "We take care of our own." You can see it on Fridays, when Katrina and fellow board member Rick Vigil, a retired school social worker, help make sure kids who might otherwise go without get sent home with food for the weekend. You can see it during basketball season, when Española reaches the state tournament and, as Dale puts it, the whole community shows up and "packs the Pit." Ruben sees it at the hospital: a woman with a flat tire, nervous about the tattooed young men who stopped to help, who not only fixed her tire but followed her to the hospital when she started having trouble breathing, just to make sure she was okay. Inside that hospital, one sick relative can mean thirty or forty family members showing up to wait together. "That's what we are," Ruben said. "Family."

That sense of family doesn't mean Española is without problems, and nobody pretended otherwise. Katrina talked about students who sometimes get "a bad rap," despite carrying circumstances most outsiders never see. "When you actually get to meet some of our students, they're amazing kids," she said. "They deserve the most that we can give them." The board is trying to make some of that tangible: members personally lobbied the state legislature, speaking from the heart rather than prepared remarks, and Española was one of only about three districts selected out of roughly 22 applicants for major high school funding, on top of a $40 million bond initiative already supporting district-wide improvements.

Near the end of our conversation, Justin mentioned his oldest daughter, an Española Valley graduate now in physician assistant school in Texas. His advice to her was simple: "Get out of here. Explore the world." Then came the rest of it. "Home will always be home. So go explore, and then you can always come back." Dale tells young people something nearly identical: "Never forget it. Remember where you came from and come back."

Maybe that's what stewardship ultimately means here. You inherit a place. You see its beauty and its shortcomings. You eat the fresh tortillas your grandmother makes before a 6 a.m. basketball practice. You recognize what still needs fixing. And eventually, if you're willing, you raise your hand, sometimes because a new high school needs building, sometimes because public trust needs rebuilding, and sometimes because a bunch of parents are ready to paint an elementary school, and somebody just needs to make sure they get the paint.