At the June 1, 2011 Board Meeting, the Fontana Unified School District Board of Education recognized the selection of Oleander Elementary School as a 2010-11 Title I Academic Achieving School.

The Title I distinction is earned by schools that have exceeded Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) for two or more years or are making significant progress toward proficiency on California's standards for all students and subgroups. Title I schools typically have a large, low-income student population which make the schools eligible to receive Title I funds. Schools receiving Title I funding are regulated by federal legislation, including the No Child Left Behind Act. To qualify for the achievement award, schools must also meet their school-wide Academic Performance Index (API) target score and the target for all numerically significant subgroups, according to the districts. In addition, the school's socioeconomically disadvantaged students must have doubled the achievement targets set for them for two consecutive years.

As Associate Superintendent of Instructional Services Oscar Duenas explained, “The State actually selected Oleander based on the low socio-economic status of the school. Because they had such a low economic status, the gap tends to be high for the subgroup and so when you are looking at the students individually, you see that they don’t perform as well. But Oleander’s kids do. Not only do they perform better, they doubled it and because of that they are being recognized as a Title I Academic Achieving School."

Mr. Duenas knows first-hand about the hard work Oleander has put in to turning around it academic performance from his days as Assistant Principal at the school. “When I first got there as an Assistant Principal, Oleander had an API of 383, which was the lowest in the county. Since then, Oleander Elementary School has become an 800 school, has been named a Distinguished School and is now a Title I Achieving School.”

“And we’re not finished yet,” said Principal Craig Baker. “The next step for our school is to become a California Blue Ribbon School. Two years ago Oleander had an attendance of 97.12 – that was the highest they’d ever had. This year we are up to 97.69. Our benchmarks are up higher than they’ve ever been and we just continue to move forward. We’ll get that Blue Ribbon award before you know it.”

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