RRPS's first employee passes away

She wasn’t secret agent 007, but Amalia “Ema” Archibeque Dreher was employee 000-0001 for Rio Rancho Public Schools.

The first employee of Rio Rancho Public Schools, she passed away peacefully at home on March 9 at the age of 83 after surviving cancer for many years.

The former executive assistant to Superintendent Sue Cleveland, Dreher worked for the district for nearly two decades.

According to former interim superintendent Jim Miller, in “Innovation, Partnerships, Results,” published by RRPS in 2014 to celebrate 20 years of existence, his wife Millie had been uncompensated while assisting him in 1993, and the couple decided to advertise for a new executive assistant.

Shortly after advertising for the open position, “the desk was quickly piled high with prospective applicants.”

Recalled Miller in 2014, the most impressive one “was hand-delivered by a petite redhead who explained that her prior school district experience in (Oxnard,) California eminently qualified” her and “she was not wrong.”

The new school board, sworn in on Oct. 14, 1993, in a special meeting at the old Rio Rancho City Hall, approved her hiring and formally assigned her that iconic employee number.

School employee 000-0002, Sue Cleveland, remembers meeting Dreher 30 years ago — on Feb. 1, 1994.

The new school district’s offices were in a decrepit building on the southeast corner of Unser and Southern boulevards.

“My first day on the job … (It) was condemned by the city of Rio Rancho, and right under that it said, ‘Rio Rancho Schools,’” she recalled. “She was the best thing I saw that day. I walked in and there was a table, a file cabinet that didn’t work; Rio Rancho Printing had loaned us a copier and Intel had loaned us a computer. And we had a map of the new district on the wall — and that was all we had.

“She was so personable and so helpful, and everyone who walked in and met her, she provided such a warm and welcoming environment, people thought, ‘This is the place to be,’” Cleveland added.

More than that, Cleveland said, “If I could have picked a sister, Ema would have been it. She helped me with my children; I helped her with hers. Our families were extremely close.

“We were very close, because we worked so closely in those first few years,” she said. “She was one of the best ambassadors for this school district, always our champion.”

In 2018, Dreher was inducted into the RRPS Hall of Honor, “for good reason,” Cleveland said. “She was a tremendous asset to (RRPS) as we got started and she stayed with us for about 20 years. She left because of cancer.”

Former RRPS employee Kim Vesely, who worked in the district office for more than 20 years, remembered Dreher as the one who “established all the protocols that the district still follows, and really was responsible for keeping track of a lot of things in the district — and making sure things got done correctly, which is really important, of course. … She was no-nonsense, but also an incredibly generous person and very helpful with all of her knowledge, and deeply cared about this community and kids.”

Dreher is survived by her six children, two stepdaughters, 16 grandchildren and one great-grandchild. The family is planning to do a celebration of life.