School District In Marin County Agrees To Desegregate School

SAUSALITO, CA — The California Attorney General's Office Friday said it has reached a settlement with the Sausalito Marin City School District to end the district's discriminatory racial segregation of students since 2013.

Attorney General Xavier Becerra's office investigated the district and found it intentionally established a racially and ethnically segregated elementary and middle school-the Bayside Martin Luther King, Jr. Academy in Sausalito-to serve a predominately minority community in unincorporated Marin City.

Sausalito students were served by the only other publicly-funded K-8 school in the district, the charter Willow Creek Academy in Sausalito. In coming to that severance decision, the district disregarded input from minority members of the community and discouraged community involvement in the schools, the state prosecutor's office said.

"Every child-no matter their stripe or stature-deserves equal access to a quality education. That's what we say we believe and what's required by law," Becerra said.

"But what we say isn't always what we do. Certainly it's not what the Sausalito Marin City School District did when it chose to segregate its students. Depriving a child of a fair chance to learn is wicked, it's morally bankrupt, and it's corrupt," Becerra added.

The discriminatory treatment by the board of trustees also included termination of math, science and English at Bayside MLK, Jr. Academy and fundraising decisions that failed to deliver promised resources to the hundreds of minority students, state prosecutors said.

After establishing Bayside MLK, Jr. Academy, the school district cut critical classroom programming for predominantly African American and Latino students while it guaranteed stable funding for Willow Creek Academy, according to the attorney generals' investigation.

The district also terminated programs that were necessary to meet the standards required to start an International Baccalaureate program it promised the school.

Partly due to the lack of access to full-time counseling at Bayside MLK, Jr. Academy, African American students in a district-funded program lost 66 times as many days of instruction to suspensions in comparison to white students, according to state prosecutors.

"This was the largest discipline disparity among white students and African American students for public school students in the state," Becerra said.

His office and the district have agreed on a process to desegregate Bayside MLK, Jr. Academy. It includes devising a plan to attract a diverse pool of students to Bayside MLK, Jr. Academy while addressing the needs of current students; appointing a third-party monitor to assure compliance with the settlement; creating a college and career counseling program for students who attended the academy between 2013 and 2019 and establishing a scholarship program that provides funds for two years of college or trade school for the affected students.

The settlement also requires the district to begin remedial action immediately and start a long-term desegregation plan beginning in the 2020-2021 school year.

Ida Green, president of the Sausalito Marin City School District's board of trustees, said the settlement allows the district to move forward with full transparency.

"As an elected official, I ask all constituents in the district to ready yourselves to stand bold in your commitment to put an end to unequal education, embrace differences, work toward change and adopt a plan toward desegregation," Green said.

District Superintendent Itoco Garcia said, "This agreement represents an historic turning point and clear plan to support our healing from a collective trauma that has its roots in systems and structures that are decades if not centuries old in our county, state and country."

By Bay City News Service