`A GREAT JOB' ROSAMOND GETS ACHIEVEMENT FUNDS.

Byline: Karen Maeshiro Staff Writer

ROSAMOND - Rosamond Elementary School was the only Antelope Valley school to get a monetary award for high achievement under the No Child Left Behind Act.

The school, one of 75 local schools that receive Title I funding because they have a large proportion of pupils from poor families, was awarded $129,000.

``We were all very excited at our school site,'' Principal Doreen Zakar said. ``The teachers have done a great job. The students are working hard all year.''

The school was notified last spring that it had been named a Title I Achieving School but only found out last week that it was getting money to go with the award. Only schools receiving Title 1 funding were eligible.

The school is waiting to learn the spending guidelines before making a decision on how to use the money, Zakar said.

State education officials have said that schools may use the money to ``help maintain excellence and to serve as models for other schools.''

Rosamond Elementary School was among 115 California schools that were awarded the grants. The state Department of Education will distribute the federal grant money ranging between $83,935 and $144,000.

The 2003 criteria for designation as a Title I ``achieving'' or ``honorable mention'' school include a 2002 Academic Performance Index, or API, score of 675 or higher; a certain level of poverty; reaching API growth targets in the 2000 through 2002 school years; and a doubled API growth target for both the entire school and the socioeconomically disadvantaged subgroup for two of the previous three years.

Rosamond met all four benchmarks. The school has posted API scores of 621 in 2000, 680 in 2001, 710 in 2002, and 741 in 2003, Zakar said.

Sixty-three percent of Rosamond pupils qualify for subsidized lunches, and more than a quarter of the pupils' families move during the school year.

Rosamond also was the only school in Kern County to be recognized, Superintendent Rod Van Norman said.

``I looked at that and said, Did our teachers and classified do a great job or what?'' Van Norman said.

The schools were recognized at a banquet in May at the 19th annual Achieving Schools Conference in San Diego. At the conference, many of the schools provided information to 1,200 educators about the practices that led to their success.

Karen Maeshiro, [phone]

karen.maeshiro(at)dailynews.com