Los Alamos Public Schools shuffles leaders for middle, high school roles

Los Alamos Public Schools is putting veteran administrators in new seats as it heads into the 2026-27 school year, moving Jill Gonzales from Los Alamos Middle School to Los Alamos High School and elevating Alicia Edgin Cardiel to lead the middle school. Caron Inglis will become assistant principal at Los Alamos High School, a shift the district says is meant to keep continuity in classrooms, discipline, student support and the return of students in the fall.

Gonzales has been in Los Alamos Public Schools since 2010 and has already led Piñon Elementary, Topper Freshman Academy and Los Alamos Middle School. Her move to Los Alamos High School puts an administrator with deep district history into a role that will shape academic expectations, behavior management and student preparation for life after graduation.

Cardiel has spent the past four years as assistant principal at LAMS and brings experience in education and leadership from several New Mexico communities. Inglis joined LAPS in 2017 and brings nearly three decades of experience in special education, school psychology and administration, a background that gives the high school another leader with experience in student services and school operations.

The district is presenting the changes as continuity rather than a reset. That matters in Los Alamos because the middle and high schools sit at the center of a system that offers more than 50 dual-enrollment courses through partnerships with the University of New Mexico-Los Alamos and Northern New Mexico College, making leadership stability part of the college and career pipeline for older students.

The move also comes as Los Alamos Public Schools tries to preserve momentum in a district that says all seven schools are Spotlight Schools and whose board was named the 2025 New Mexico School Boards Association Large District School Board of the Year. Superintendent Jennifer Guy has worked in New Mexico education for 35 years, taught at Piñon Elementary in White Rock and served as principal at Mountain Elementary, giving her a long view of the district’s schools and the pressures facing them.

Online registration for the 2026-27 school year opened at 8:00 a.m. on Monday, March 2, 2026, and the district began accepting out-of-district applications on March 19. The leadership shift lands in the same planning window as those enrollment decisions, when principals and assistant principals help set schedules, staffing and support services for the year ahead.

District web pages still listed Gonzales as LAMS principal and Alicia Edgin Cardiel as assistant principal, and the LAMS family page also named Colby Holland as dean of students, showing the changes had been announced before every online listing caught up. The June 9 board meeting, the first after the 2025-26 school year wrapped up, put the staffing move in the middle of summer planning for a district that will have to balance continuity, enrollment and budget pressures when students return.