New leader no stranger to Cinnabar School

Former board member Sandy Doyle takes charge of Cinnabar Elementary School.|

“It’s like I’m coming home, but now I have 282 kids. I have absolutely gone full circle,” explains new Cinnabar Elementary School teacher Sandy Doyle.

Doyle’s own children have moved on, but Doyle has returned to a school she served as an active parent and school board member a decade ago.

Doyle became superintendent/principal of Cinnabar, a PK-through eighth-grade neighborhood school, in July after Tracie Kern moved to Southern California. Doyle returned to Cinnabar after serving in a similar capacity for Lincoln School in Marin County, the oldest one-room school in California.

“I absolutely loved it,” Doyle says of her experience at Lincoln. “It made it a very difficult decision to leave. We were truly a family. I was very close to each of our students. I hope to bring a lot of that feeling here (to Cinnabar).”

She says her previous experience at Cinnabar has made her transition easier.

“I already knew about a third of the teachers,” she explains. “I know the entire board and a lot of the families.”

The teachers and families she wasn’t already acquainted with she is getting to know quickly. “I go into every classroom every day, I greet parents when they bring their kids to school. I meet the bus and I say goodbye every day,” she says.

Doyle says she is confident she can handle the most challenging aspect of being a superintendent - the budget. “I understand finances very well,” she explains. “At Lincoln we had to fund raise from alumni and family members. I had to handle the finances by myself. Here I have more people to help.”

A major emphasis at Cinnabar under the new principal will be on student conduct. “We want to teach our students to be respectful and kind to each other,” she says. “We ask our students, ‘Are your actions something your parents would be proud of.’?”

One of her major interests is history. At Lincoln School, she instituted a Living History Day with children and parents dressing up as frontier settlers who only had one-room schools. Everyone got involved. Doyle’s father taught the students how to use a lasso and her mother was a frontier cook.

“I love history,” Doyle says. Her enthusiasm resulted in her receiving a scholarship to attend the prestigious Colonial Williamsburg Teachers Institute.

One of the challenges Doyle faces is integrating middle school and elementary students on the same campus. She points out that the middle school students have their own area, including their own quad and have activities planned specifically for them. “We try to teach the older students that when they are around the smaller students, they have to behave different,” the principal explains. “We focus on teaching them as young adults.”

Cinnabar is a member of the South County Consortium for special needs students, and the new principal doesn’t neglect those students, visiting their classroom every day and seeing that they are mainstreamed in with the other students as much as possible.

While Doyle is driven to get to know every student personally, she says she realizes she isn’t alone in her dedication.

“My teachers and staff are incredibly devoted,” she says. “I don’t have an issue with a single person on the staff.”

And, she isn’t shy about using the support. “Now I have a team and there is a lot of collaboration,” she explains. I don’t have to make every single decision myself. Here I have people to help.”

For Doyle, Cinnabar now, and in the future, is centered on the students.

“I want them to be welcoming, kind, strong academically and I want them to take that work into the community and keep the history of Petaluma as a caring community alive,” she says.

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