Doyle Park set for tough year

<p>Talk to some teachers at Doyle Park Elementary School as summer vacation comes to an end, and you hear a slight case of the blues.</p><p>But not Kimi Ogg and other teachers gathered at the school Friday night with students and parents to both ring in a new year and gird themselves for a campaign to keep the campus intact.</p><p>"This still is a fantastic school," said Ogg, standing among about 100 teachers, students and parents eating hot dogs and burgers. "It would be really easy to get down and pessimistic about this upcoming year, but everyone I have talked to here, we're excited."</p><p>Doyle Park Elementary has had a rough go of it lately.</p><p>The school lost its academically rigorous International Baccalaureate program in February amid school board concerns that it wasn't drawing in new students and was taking away from teachers' focus on test scores.</p><p>In 2004-05, the school had 398 students and scored 720 on the Academic Performance Index, the state's main performance ranking. Last school year, enrollment was 269 and the API score was 683.</p><p>This summer, Principal Fran Link left the school -- the fourth principal to do so in five years. District officials are conducting a search for Link's replacement but do not expect to have made a new hire by the first day of school Wednesday.</p><p>Kindergarten enrollment remains low as the surrounding neighborhood has aged and parents of school-age students have opted not to send their kids there.</p><p>While teachers are committed to raising scores and taking the pressure off the campus, those same scores don't completely reflect what kind of learning goes on in a classroom, said Gretta Klosevitz, a second-grade teacher at Doyle Park.</p><p>"You have to meet somewhere in the middle," she said. "It's certainly not the only measure of student success, but you do have to pay respect to it because that is the world we are living in right now."</p><p>Seventy-six percent of Doyle Park's students are economically disadvantaged, and 44 percent are English-language learners.</p><p>That student body makeup reflects the real world, said Candace Rideout-Cuevas. The mom of a sixth-grader has spent seven years trying to understand what she considers misperceptions by parents from other districts and other schools about her son's school.</p><p>"Other parents will say that (teachers) are so busy teaching Spanish-speaking kids, he won't get what he needs," she said. "We have never experienced that -- ever."</p><p>"I get frustrated with people who have never set foot on this campus," she said.</p><p>Sheree Armstrong said her fourth-grade son has attended schools in Windsor and elsewhere in Santa Rosa, but has thrived in Doyle Park's small classes.</p><p>"I don't pay attention to the test scores. I pay attention to how well my son is doing and how the teachers are working with him," she said. "He's gotten more help here than he's gotten since he's been in school. This school is awesome."</p><p>But the pressure remains.</p><p>The Santa Rosa School District is facing potentially multimillion-dollar cuts, depending on final budget decisions made in Sacramento.</p><p>The single biggest cost-saver is closing a school. Operating costs for elementary schools range from $100,000 to $500,000 a year, according to district staff.</p><p>"It's sad. Our funds seem to be going to places where they shouldn't be," said Tania Flores, who came to Friday night's barbecue with Adrian Macias, her third-grade brother, and her mother. "They need to be in an environment that is controlled, that's always the same. Change for them isn't good at this age."</p><p>You can reach Staff Writer Kerry Benefield at 526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.</p><p>com.</p>