Analy population spikes due to El Molino sanctions

Tiger freshman class at least 100 students larger
As a result of the sanctions imposed on El Molino High School due to testing irregularities in the STAR test program two years in a row, students this year get the right to transfer to another district high school without having to submit a request for approval.
Hence, as of Friday (Aug. 17), 60 Lions had traded their manes in for tiger stripes, when they officially transferred from Forestville’s high school to Analy High School in Sebastopol.
The testing irregularities — reportedly due to one teacher giving out test answers last year and a different teacher making an error when administering the test the previous year, as well as some low test scores in a socially economically disadvantaged subgroup — led the state to invalidate the school-wide test scores, putting the four-time California Distinguished School into program improvement (PI).
Program improvement is a designation the federal government uses when schools don’t achieve adequate test scores two or more years consecutively. Schools in PI have a list of sanctions or requirements imposed on them until such time as their test scores meet the expectation, or the bar, two years in a row.
“The biggest sanctions impacting El Molino are that the district must honor any request for a student to attend another similar school in the district, and the second is the district must provide transportation between those schools,” West Sonoma County Union High School District Superintendent Keller McDonald said.
“The state sets goals for testing. The number of all students in the school has to meet specific goals and each significant subgroup within the school has to also meet goals. Our scores for all students met the goals, but one significant subgroup did not,” El Molino High School Principal Doria Trombetta said.
“Our community has always been very supportive of El Molino High School and we are very proud of our students. Even though the state has deemed us to be in program improvement our outcomes show that our students are succeeding,” Trombetta said, referring to statistics indicating El Molino has the highest percentage of students continuing their education after high school (See “After high school, WSCUHSD students scatter to the wind,” Sonoma West Times & News, June 14).
“Faculty and staff are working just as hard or harder (as faculty and staff) at Analy, and they still continue to see an impact,” McDonald said.
However, the sudden shift of enrollment impacts both El Molino and Analy high schools.
For El Molino, it translates into fewer teachers and fewer class sections. In other words, the impact there is adjusting the staff and classes to match enrollment. For example, one teacher is teaching the first part of the day at El Molino and then finishing at Analy. Last year, a similar bell schedule was created between the two schools to allow them to share staff, without having to make staff reductions, when possible.
A smaller number of students also means less money for El Molino since funding for schools is driven by enrollment and attendance, so the school’s ability to continue offering diverse courses could be stretched thin, McDonald said.  
However, El Molino has not lost any programs, according to Trombetta.  
“We have been very fortunate that we have not lost programs, because the teachers are continuing to step up. It makes the schedule a little bit more inflexible. The cost will be that our very hard working teachers are going to be asked to teach more preparations. But I am very happy to say we have maintained programs,” she said.
The impact is also seen at Analy, where teaching sections and additional staffing have been added to adjust to the increased student population.
“It presents an unknown in terms of how many students and teachers we will need, that really can’t be answered until the first day of school when students show up,” Analy High School Principal Chris Heller said last week, prior to the arrival of students.
“It really impacts the counselors a lot as well, when students want to change classes and there is nowhere to go ‘cause every class is full,” he said.
At the Aug. 8 school board meeting, Heller told trustees that the incoming Analy freshman class would be 435 in number and said, “We will be challenged to find space for all of them.” That number had grown to 450 by last week, which is about 100 more students than the usual amount of freshmen, according to Heller.
“We are looking forward to the first day of school with excitement and a bit of intrepidation about how many students we are going to have. We will have to balance classes after the first day,” he said.
This movement of students has fed into the rumblings about the possible consolidation of West County’s two largest high schools, but word from the superintendent is the rumblings are nothing more than rumors.
“We don’t consider consolidation a viable option for West County high schools. We still have over 2,100 students and we can’t fit all of them on one campus,” McDonald said.
According to the WASC reports (Western Association of Schools and Colleges) and school officials, total enrollment at El Molino has declined much more rapidly than at Analy.
At Analy, 1,404 students were enrolled at the beginning of the 2005-06 school year; 1,305 in the 2010-11 school year; and 1,277 in the 2011-12 school year.
At El Molino, 1,039 students were enrolled at the beginning of the 2005-06 school year; about 789 in the 2010-11 school year; and approximately 731 (which includes students attending Russian River Ramparts off-campus independent study program located in Guerneville) in the 2011-12 school year.
The shift in enrollment is “not because of test scores as much as it is geography,” McDonald said.
“We have carefully studied and monitored the enrollments over the years and there are two primary reasons for the diverging enrollment pattern. One is elementary school enrollment in the El Molino attendance area has declined, due to changing demographics or families with fewer children,” he said.
Districts that feed students in the Analy attendance area have maintained their enrollment, partly due to students attending West County schools who live outside of West County, in places like Santa Rosa, Cotati and Rohnert Park, he said, noting they want to go to Sebastopol area schools, which are closer to where they live than El Molino.
When many of those same students get older they apply to attend Analy High School, in part so they can be with their elementary school friends.
So the result is “a glass that is evaporating faster at El Molino than at Analy and it’s being replenished from outside the area faster at Analy than at El Molino,” McDonald said.
About 20 percent of the students attending Analy are inter-district — or students who live outside the district, but attend a district school.
That said, El Molino — where about 10 percent of the students are on inter-district requests — has its following too. The difference appears to be simple geography.
While Analy tends to draw students from Rohnert Park, Cotati and areas of southwest Santa Rosa, the more rural El Molino draws mostly from just northwest Santa Rosa, which includes students who live in the Piner High School area.
“Several of the inter-district transfers I sign are for parents that say that transportation to Analy is more convenient than it is to El Molino, often times due to their place of employment,” Trombetta said, adding, “El Molino is a wonderful school.”