About Our School

To meet the varying needs of all students, El Camino High School was founded in 1980 to serve students who were struggling to earn their high school diplomas at Rancho Cotate High School. Faced with students dropping out of high school and failing to meet graduation requirements, the Cotati-Rohnert Park Unified School District established an alternative school. El Camino High School served a very specific need, to create an academic atmosphere where at-risk students could be successful in a smaller educational learning environment while maintaining good academic standing and remaining on schedule to earn a high school diploma.

El Camino High School was created to provide all students with a greater opportunity to earn a high school diploma during their 4-year academic career. El Camino High School offers students a more flexible schedule with accelerated learning opportunities. El Camino High School students encounter a blended learning environment that capitalizes upon direct instruction and online learning with two teachers and a bilingual instructional assistant. Through the use of the online learning platform, Edgenuity, and direct teacher support, students can recover missing credits for courses that were either failed or marked incomplete during their coursework at Rancho Cotate High School.

El Camino High School is located on the Rancho Cotate High School campus and serves approximately 50-60 students in a given school year. This number fluctuates as students who earn their appropriate credits may graduate early and leave during the regular school year. The students attending El Camino are primarily seniors, and some juniors, who have struggled to remain on track for graduation and have faced challenges academically and often socially and emotionally as well. Students are credit deficient and require additional academic and social support. A number of the students are English Language Learners who struggled to reach English and academic proficiency during their high school careers. These students require a different approach to help them complete their coursework and graduation requirements. As an alternative school, the credits needed to earn an El Camino High School Diploma are 180. The purpose of El Camino High School is to ensure students gain a sense of well-being and academic accomplishment before their graduation.