NACA High School-Message from Head of School

Dear NACA School community, 

Welcome to the school year 2024-2025!

My name is Shannon Douma and I am from the Pueblo of Laguna and Tewa-Hopi. My clans are Water and Roadrunner. I was born and raised in my Pueblo community and spent much of my adolescent years at the Santa Fe Indian School (SFIS), my alma mater. My college life was spent outside of New Mexico on the east coast and mid west. My involvement at NACA began in 2005, as we embarked on an educational journey to create a school that would serve the needs of our Native American youth in an urban setting. For the past 19 years, I have worked to create the systems and structures in place to ensure that we welcome volunteers and community partners into our school. I worked to develop the out of school time programming for middle and high school students by working with our before and after school partners who provide programming to our students. I also devoted my time to build our recruitment, family/student outreach and the enrollment and registration process for students who were accepted into NACA. I continue to work and expand our college and career engagement focus for high school students, which includes building our partnerships with colleges offering dual credit, expanding our network of internship sites and offering more college prep experiences through our affiliated networks, such as NM Simons Scholars and NM Davis Scholars. Although I have had many roles at NACA, as high school Head of School/Principal, I feel the responsibility even more as I facilitate, guide and align our school community toward common goals and build the infrastructure around it so it's sustainable for many years to come.

I look forward to this coming school year as we align our work even more toward our mission. Thank you for entrusting your students with us as we support them on their high school pathway to graduation and beyond!