North Bay School Board Targeted for Recall - San Francisco Chronicle - March 20, 1997- by Peter Fimrite

North Bay School Board Targeted for Recall
Sausalito, Marin City fed up with poor test scores
Peter Fimrite, Chronicle North Bay Bureau

Thursday, March 20, 1997

After years of throwing money at a failing public school system, residents of Sausalito and Marin City have finally joined forces in an unprecedented attempt to recall the entire school board.

An eclectic group of house-boaters, wealthy hillside homeowners and public housing residents officially began a signature collection drive yesterday for a ballot measure that would oust the five school trustees.

The petitioners blame the board members for the abysmal performance of the public school district's 238 mostly African American students and the decision by many parents -- most of whom are white -- to send their children to private schools.

``This is the biggest issue in Sausalito, Marin City and the houseboat community ever,'' said George Stratigos, Sausalito's vice mayor and one of the leaders of the recall drive. ``This community will no longer tolerate the status quo.''

The Sausalito School District, which includes Bayside Elementary and Martin Luther King Middle schools in Sausalito and Northbay alternative school in Marin City, spends more than $14,000 per student, more than three times the statewide average. However, the district's students have the lowest test scores in Marin County. More than half of the students fall below the 35th percentile in their grade level, one of the lowest performances in the state.

The recall effort, called Project Homecoming, seeks to replace trustees Robert Holt, Gracie Grove, Dennis Elsasser, Teleatha Davis and Delores Talley for being ineffective. Recall supporters have about three months to collect 1,814 signatures to qualify for a special election in September.

Elsasser, the board's vice president, said the problems are more complex than numbers can quantify. He said it is not a lack of leadership that hurts the district but a lack of interest and understanding among the citizens who have abandoned the schools.

``Project Homecoming has not come up with any specific plan outlining what they would do differently,'' said Elsasser, adding that only three people came to a recent school board meeting. He said the recall effort began only after the board refused to fire Superintendent William Redman and replace him with Shirley Thornton, the former San Francisco housing authority director who was fired by Mayor Willie Brown last March.

Race, wealth and diminishing enrollment are factors in the drama. About 90 percent of the students in the district are black residents of Marin City, an unincorporated town of 3,000 people living in public housing on the northwestern edge of Sausalito.

More than 30 percent of the students have been assigned to special education classes, which require expensive individualized schooling and therapy for learning disabilities.

Since 1990, enrollment has declined from 387 to 238 students. The district lost many children when military housing at forts Baker, Barry and Cronkite closed. As the student population became predominantly minority, many white Sausalito parents enrolled their children in private schools.

Terrie Harris-Green, a Marin City resident who has provided educational support services to the schools for 15 years, said she was so upset with her daughter's education that she sent her to a boarding school in Mississippi.

``For the first time in the history of Marin City and Sausalito we have come together for something and what's pulled us together is our kids,'' Harris-Green said. ``We have ministers, parents and educators from all the local communities working together to change things. It's like the Berlin Wall has come down.''