Sapello, New Mexico is a New Mexico community located in the pine-covered mountains of the northern part of the state. The community traces its roots backs hundreds of years to the first Spaniards to settle in North America, who joined the Native Americans who were already living in the mountains.

Parents, teachers, students, and community members from Sapello joined together in a sustained project that nominally concerned the creation of a Wildlife Art Project, but in actuality became the vehicle for the community reasserting itself in educational decision-making. Hence the title of this entry: The Art of Community Decision-Making. The story is viewed through the lens of Entry 2: Community Learning and Empowerment. Though the project began as an effort to extend student learning, the adults in the community may have been the greatest learners of all, as they came to see themselves as legitimate authorities in their children’s school experiences, as well as resources in local history, ecology, language, and culture.

An intriguing aspect of this entry is how much the community struggled to be able to focus on themselves as learners instead of the students. It took several drafts and community conversations before the group uncovered the story of community empowerment that was embedded in the story of the students’ learning. This is articulated clearly in an analysis in the last pages of the narrative, and explains why much of the documentary evidence is perhaps more attuned to the themes and aspects of Entry 1: Student Learning and Contributions. By the time that the empowerment story emerged, many of the opportunities to collect evidence of learning from community members had passed. Nevertheless, the entry still offers a compelling example of the community side of place-based learning.