Photo by Michael J. GallegosTribune

Tribune

Elizabeth Haney, an Eldorado freshman soccer player, showed her school spirit and her handmade T-shirt before the start of school recently. "We play La Cueva today," she said.

Photo by Michael J. GallegosTribune

Tribune

Aiden Plont, a 14-year-old Eldorado freshman, studies vocabulary words during the morning Eagle Advisory Program. Eldorado launched the morning study session three years ago to offer students extra tutoring time and to help troubled students excel. "Failing is not an option," says ninth-grade academy adviser Sam Chavez.

Photo by Michael J. GallegosTribune

Tribune

Eldorado High School marching band members walk to class from the football field after a morning practice.

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Scruffy-haired students wearing baggy jeans and sweatshirts trickle across Eldorado High School's campus a few minutes before the final bell clangs through the air.

As classes release, students cluster at tables under trees between the maze of brick buildings that make up the grounds. Teachers stroll by toward the parking lot.

Built in 1970, Eldorado seems to have the personality of a 36-year-old. It's not so young anymore, and the facilities aren't so shiny. But it seems to have accepted middle age with grace.

The atmosphere is mellow and calm, with a twinkle of feisty spirit hiding under the surface - audible as the school marching band's shiny horns blare across campus in the early evening hours.

The school wasn't always this way.

When it was built at 11300 Montgomery Blvd. N.E., the area was the fastest-growing part of Albuquerque.

Back then, the school seemed to have all the resources, all the students and all the money.

It was a big strapping youth, an athletic and academic powerhouse that dominated the city's other public high schools.

"We had a much more diverse curriculum at that time," said Pam Evans, who's worked at Eldorado for 33 years. "That had to shrink."

Eldorado was built to look like a college campus - with flexible schedules and lots of options for the 3,300 students that attended each year in the 1970s, said Evans, 56, a councilor who taught gym at the school for her first 17 years.

Today, the school's population has shrunk to 2,153 students. The schedule isn't as flexible, with fewer courses offered during specific time slots each day, Evans said.

The growth has moved to other parts of town, farther north and west, and Eldorado's personality has changed.

"Our population became a little more transient, a little less stable - and our campus got older," Evans said.

Eldorado is a good school academically but not a great one, acknowledged Principal Martin Sandoval, who started working at the school this year.

"We're a very good school, but we want to move from good to great," Sandoval said.

Getting back to that dominance will take some strategic thinking - and some time, Sandoval said.

To address it, school staff members are considering opening a series of "academic pathways" in areas such as business marketing, science and engineering, health sciences and the arts, said Therese Dorwart, assistant principal in charge of curriculum.

"We're looking at a five-year plan," Dorwart said. "Those are areas the students are interested in."

Eldorado also has a freshman academy, which keeps incoming students in a single building, with a strict schedule as they adjust to high school life, Sandoval said.

The concept is a hit with students, said Gilbert Prada, a 16-year-old junior.

"It made everything easier," Prada said. "I had my locker right there and only one class outside."

Life at the school is also relatively stress-free - despite the usual peer pressure, said Aaron Sacco, another 16-year-old junior.

"Most of the people at the school are pretty nice to each other," said Sacco, sitting at a table with Prada after school waiting for his driver's ed class to start.

"The cliques and everything, they get along OK," Sacco added. "We don't fight. Most of the teachers here are really cool, too. They care about you. They want to teach."

About 92 percent of Eldorado's graduating seniors say they want to go to either a two- or four-year college, which is something the school takes pride in, Evans said.

But when you break that number down - 71 percent want to go to four-year college - it shows there's still work to be done, she said.

"It was once 90 percent that wanted to go to a four-year college - it's hard for us to admit it's now 71," she said.

Also, not all the students who enter as freshman graduate as seniors, said Scott McIndoo, 31, a teacher and the school newspaper adviser for the past five years.

Each year Eldorado starts with about 575 freshmen, but it graduates only about 465 seniors, McIndoo said.

"We lose students between the sophomore and junior year especially," McIndoo said.

Campus life is fairly strict, McIndoo said, with bans on cell phones, music players and backward ballcaps, which makes some students look elsewhere for a different type of campus life.

"It requires a lot of discipline and it means you have to work," McIndoo said.

Still, all the pieces are in place for Eldorado to once again become an academic powerhouse over the next few years. As he settles in, Sandoval says he hopes to move in that direction.

"One thing I really respect and appreciate is the quality of our faculty and the parent and student involvement on campus," Sandoval said. "We have just really good quality kids."