Santa Rosa School Board member Tad Wakefield called out Elsie Allen and Piner high schools Wednesday night for what he called their “abysmal” scores in the English language arts section of the STAR test.

At Wednesday night’s board meeting, Wakefield said Elsie Allen’s junior class score of 27 percent of students rating advanced or proficient in English was a poor showing.

“The way I interpret that is that only 27 percent of our eleventh graders at Elsie Allen can write at a proficient (level),” he said. “That is a concern to me.”

“I looked at Piner High’s – 35 percent proficiency,” he said. “This is troubling.”

“Being an English teacher,” the SRJC instructor said. “I will get many of these students.”

“I was just shocked to learn this,” he said. “One of my goals is to see what I can do as a board member to improve these scores.”

By comparison, 67 percent of eleventh graders at Maria Carrillo scored advanced or proficient; 54 percent at Montgomery and 56 percent at Santa Rosa High.

Also interesting, all schools showed a decline in scores from students in ninth grade to junior year.

At Elsie, 35 percent of freshman scored proficient or advanced, 34 percent of sophomores and 27 percent of juniors.

At Piner, 41 percent of freshman scored proficient or advanced, 37 percent of sophomores and 35 percent of juniors.

At Carrillo, the numbers were 76, 69 and 67.

At Montgomery, it was 62, 56 and 54.

And at Santa Rosa, the numbers went from 67 percent of freshmanr to 66 percent of sophomores and 56 of juniors.