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Monday, March 15, 2010
Ex-APS Board Member Had a Passion for Education
By Juan Carlos Rodriguez
Journal Staff Writer
Berna Facio, a former Albuquerque Public Schools teacher and board member who represented the North Valley and the West Side, died Saturday.
Facio was 71 years old and had been battling colon cancer, her family said. Services have not been announced.
Her love of education began when she was a child, her husband, Manuel Facio, said.
"Her father would read a lot to her. They lived in a very rural area, but she grew up loving education. She rode a bus 40 miles each way to high school and she hated to miss school," Facio said. "Education was something she loved personally and then later she began to see the need to educate our children, and Hispanic children in particular."
The Facios, high school sweethearts, married in 1957 and raised six children in Albuquerque. Five of them, Evelyn, Vincent, Angelica, Elizabeth and Dominique survive their mother.
While raising her children, Facio worked for the federal government, at Kirtland Air Force Base, and the Archdiocese of Santa Fe.
It was only after all her children were on their own that she pursued her lifelong dream of becoming a teacher, Manuel Facio said. He said she went to college at University of New Mexico and received a degree in Spanish in 1991. In 1993 she received a second degree in secondary education at the College of Santa Fe, gaining her teaching certificate in 1994, and then in 1997 she received a master's degree in secondary education from UNM, Facio said.
She worked as an elementary school teacher at three APS schools for about seven years before setting her sights on a school board seat.
"She decided she could probably help more if she was in a position with a say over rules and laws and such things," Manuel Facio said.
She was elected to her first term in 2001 and re-elected in 2005. She decided not to seek re-election last year.
APS board vice president Paula Maes was elected in 2001 along with Facio.
"There's a woman who will be sorely missed," Maes said Sunday. "She had such a good basis to be a board member, with her background as a teacher and a parent. She truly understood the needs of our teachers and students of our community."
Maes said Facio was a quiet board member not prone to passionate outbursts, but she said Facio always stood firmly for her beliefs. Maes said Facio always fought against letting APS police officers carry guns, because she felt that schools should never be a place for guns.
"We reached a compromise where guns were not allowed during the school day. So police could have them in the car, but not in the school," Maes said.
She said Facio was always conscious and sensitive to the achievement gap that exists between Hispanic students and their Anglo counterparts, a subject Manuel Facio also said was important to her.
"An equal playing field was very important to her. She felt Hispanic kids did not have a background that gave them that, a lot of times. She was for anything that would benefit all the kids, but because she saw a discrepancy, she concentrated more on Hispanic kids. She wanted to create a desire for them to go to college," he said.
In December, the APS board renamed its Montgomery Complex, an administrative office that houses several departments and is used for teacher training, the Berna Facio Teacher Training Center.
Besides her commitment to education, Facio was an avid bowler and was very involved in the Catholic church. She also played guitar and sang, as did her husband and her children, who would play music together, Manuel Facio said. And she loved to travel, including taking cruises, and took Spanish language classes in Spain and Mexico.
"She loved to travel and see new things and learn new things," Manuel Facio said.
He said he is very proud of what his wife accomplished in her life.
"We started out from very humble beginnings, especially her, and she had a dream to be a teacher, to be involved in education," Facio said. "And she was able to do quite a bit. She did a lot of wonderful things that people who come from a little ranch don't get to do."
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