Over time, any list of Santa Fe's leading citizens has included people who stood up for teachers, pushed for student achievement and did so by spending tax money wisely.

Marcelino Abreau

If you think the idea of measuring yearly school progress started with No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, think again. One of the first public school teachers in Santa Fe was Marcelino Abreu, probably the first educator to give the public a report card on the schools. He did that in 1830 with a report that listed 12 students who made the grade. In particular, Abreu named three students who began the year with no math skills but ended the year having mastered addition and multiplication. Since 1808, city leaders clearly had seen education as a means to strengthen the community but struggled to pay for open-admission schools. Finally in 1827, under Mexican rule, regulations outlined a school system and a curriculum based primarily on Christian doctrine. Not long afterward, the school run by Abreu opened.

Source: UFOs Over Galisteo by Robert J. Tórrez

Brother Botulph

The Christian Brothers opened present-day St. Michael's High School in 1859. When the first burst of energy began to fade, a new generation of Brothers considered closing the school in 1870. Peter J. Schneider, known as Brother Botulph, saved the school, recruited Brothers to teach in Santa Fe and established a training program for local students wanting to teach. St. Michael's, chartered as the College of the Christian Brothers, graduated its first class in 1876. Botulph raised money in 1878 for a new classroom building that still stands today as the Lamy Building on Old Santa Fe Trail. Brother Botulph died in 1906.

Source: St. Michael's High School

John V. Conway

A New Mexico native, son of an Irish father and Spanish mother, and graduate of St. Michael's High School and The University of New Mexico, John V. Conway got his start in Santa Fe in the hotel and restaurant business. His lasting mark, however, was his long career of expanding access to education. Conway became county superintendent of schools in 1900 and worked for more than 20 years as an innovator and reformer. He led a building boom that brought comfortable classrooms and modern equipment to local schools, many in rural areas. To serve adults who had little formal education, Conway opened the schools at night and offered classes in reading, spelling and composition.

Source: Leading Facts in New Mexico History by Ralph Emerson Twitchell

Estafanita "Esther" Martinez

In her mid-50s, Estafanita Martinez quite unexpectedly became a teacher. Then in 20 years as Tewa instructor and director of bilingual education at San Juan Day School, she did as much as anyone to preserve her native Tewa language. She attended Santa Fe and Albuqueque Indian schools, where students were taught to shed Native language and culture. When she became a classroom volunteer in the late 1960s, Martinez proved to be a gifted storyteller and found the inspiration to save and record the old stories in Tewa. She wrote a Tewa dictionary and two collections of stories. After Martinez's death in 2004, Congress passed the Native Languages Preservation Act in her name.

Source: Matthew J. Martinez

Geronima Cruz Montoya

From 1937 to 1962, Geronima Cruz Montoya directed the Studio School of painting at Santa Fe Indian School. The Studio School, founded in 1932 by Dorothy Dunn, was controversial because it advanced the notion that Indian School students could learn academic concepts by creating visual arts. A native of San Juan Pueblo, Montoya became Dunn's first student and then her successor as school director. Meantime, Montoya continued to create her own art, earned a college degree, created an adult program for the northern pueblos and founded a Native American crafts cooperative. By 1962, feeling tied up in federal red tape, she stopped teaching. Earlier this year, at 95, Montoya was honored as the 2010 Indian Market poster artist.

Source: The Worlds of P'otsúnú by Jeanne Shutes and Jill Mellick

Manuel "Bob" Chávez

From 1887 to 1998, St. Catherine Indian School inspired intense loyalty among the students and families it served. Bob Chávez of Cochiti Pueblo exemplified that lifelong commitment to the boarding school situated near Rosario Cemetery. A successful artist who worked in a basement studio at the school, Chávez neither forgot that a St. Kate's teacher had encouraged him to pursue art nor that the school equipped him mentally and spiritually to survive the Bataan Death March and a World War II prison camp. For 52 years, Chávez volunteered at the school as a teacher, coach and fundraiser. He died in 2003, five years after the school closed.

Source: Office of the State Historian

Edward Ortiz

In the 1980s, a nationally recognized reformer led Santa Fe Public Schools. Edward Ortiz, Santa Fe's first Hispanic superintendent, gave teachers an expanded role in the management of their schools. In 1989, he became known as the first superintendent in the country to give teachers and parents the power to choose their new principal. Ortiz's death during surgery shocked the community. He was only 53. "He was the heart and soul of Santa Fe education," a school board member said.

Lorraine Goldman

As budgets got tighter and burdens on teacher grew heavier, Lorraine Goldman saw that businesses, service clubs and volunteers needed to step up. She was director of Partners in Education from 1990 to 2001 and perfected the art of squeezing thousands of dollars and service hours out of businesses in support of education. From those allies she recruited, Goldman collected money for classroom supplies, field trips, internships and awards. When a teacher needs money or resources, Goldman once said, "All they do is call." Since retiring from Partners, Goldman has stayed active in community service. Partners is still going strong, too, making sure education is everyone's job.