PAGE ONE -- Sausalito's Schools -- Well-Funded But Failing Inner-city problems money can't fix - San Francisco Chronicle - By Peter Fimrite

PAGE ONE -- Sausalito's Schools -- Well-Funded But Failing

Peter Fimrite, Chronicle North Bay Bureau

Friday, April 25, 1997

Elizabeth Mongillo's son Alex went to public school in Sausalito for three years -- and she says he has the mental scars to prove it.

She is one of hundreds of white Sausalito parents who have either pulled their children out of the public schools or refused to send them there in the first place.

It is, by all accounts, a textbook case of ``white flight.'' Almost 90 percent of the district's 248 students are now minorities and 78 percent of them are African Americans, mostly from Marin City, a low-income housing area.

Parents say the problem is that the schools are grossly inadequate and the leadership incompetent. District officials blame the schools' problems on Sausalito parents who can afford to abandon the system, which has the lowest test scores in Marin County.

Fed up with a failing system, a racially diverse group of parents and educators in Sausalito and Marin City have formed Project Homecoming, which is attempting to recall the entire Sausalito School District board. The group includes a growing number of African Americans.

Cathomas Starbird, a black Sausalito resident who grew up in Marin City, refused to enroll her 13-year-old daughter in Sausalito schools after visiting the Bayside campus.

She is now working with Project Homecoming in the hope that things will improve so her 4-year- old daughter and 2-year-old son can attend.

``You only have one shot with the education of your child,'' said Starbird. ``I have 13 nieces and nephews going to Bayside school, and they are not getting an equal education. It's a vicious pattern.''


DIVERSE COMMUNITIES
The recall campaign has stirred an intense political debate over the use of money for education, race relations in the schools and the integration of two very diverse Marin County communities, one rich and the other poor.

An estimated 200 white Sausalito children, including Mongillo's son Alex, travel every morning to schools elsewhere instead of the district's two schools, Bayside/ Martin Luther King Elementary School and Northbay Alternative School. There are currently more Sausalito children enrolled in Tiburon's St. Hillary School than attend public schools in their hometown.

``It's a shame,'' said Mongillo, who is not involved in Project Homecoming but applauds the effort. ``We thought we'd support the public schools, but my son was hampered educationally and psychologically, and I finally decided he doesn't have to be a guinea pig.'' Alex now attends a public charter school in Novato.

The Sausalito School District spends $11,200 per student, nearly three times the statewide average. Despite this munificence, the students have the lowest test scores in Marin County. Fourth-graders scored below the 35th percentile in both reading and language during statewide tests last year, and scores in many other grades were below average.


TEACHERS WELL PAID
The blame cannot be placed on low teacher salaries. Sausalito teachers are paid well above the statewide average. The starting salary of $29,265 ranks sixth out of the 19 school districts in Marin. And the schools themselves are attractive and well supplied.

So what is wrong?

If anything, the failure of the Sausalito school system shows how difficult it is for schools to overcome problems associated with poverty: unemployment, substance abuse, lack of parental supervision and crime.

These problems plague Marin City, an unincorporated town of 3,000 people living mostly in public housing on the northwestern edge of Sausalito.

The town, built in 1942 to house wartime shipbuilders, is the poorest community in Marin County. The crime rate is more than triple that of surrounding communities, and unemployment runs about seven times that of Marin as a whole. Single mothers are the breadwinners in 70 percent of Marin City households, and 20 percent of the children are born to unwed teenage mothers.

The Sausalito school district has been integrated since the 1960s, when students were bused back and forth between the two communities.

But what was once a racially balanced mix of children living on welfare, on houseboats or in working-class homes and military barracks started to change in 1990, when military housing at Forts Baker, Barry and Cronkite began closing. In 1989, 51 percent of Sausalito School District students were white. Enrollment subsequently dropped from 387 to 248, leaving a predominantly African American student population from Marin City.

The result is a racial, economic and cultural divide that has ignited the passions of parents, educators, social workers and black and white residents throughout the region. Test scores have plummeted and discipline problems increased.

District officials say nearly 30 percent of the remaining students have been assigned to special education classes, which require expensive individualized schooling and therapy for learning disabilities, and that this accounts for some of the high cost of education.

``Most studies show that the lower the socioeconomic status of the community, the higher the special education needs of its children will be,'' said Dennis Elsasser, school board vice president. ``Many educators consider the parents' educational level as good a predictor of academic achievement as the SAT.''

Education experts also say comparing school funding can be problematical, especially when districts are small, because all districts have certain fixed costs.

The recent problems have, nonetheless, widened the rift between Sausalito, a wealthy tourist town of New-Agers and in-line skaters, and Marin City. At stake is what social science experts say is WASPish Marin County's most important multicultural enclave.

The victims of this chasm are the children, both white and black. And the battle lines in the recall effort are being drawn at their feet.

Mongillo, a single mother who lives with her son in a modest apartment in Sausalito, said district officials can talk all they want about special education and wealthy white people abandoning the poor. If that's the problem, she asked, why did her son get perfect grades at Northbay and then need remedial help in English and writing at his new school?


`TOTALLY SHOCKED'
Mongillo said Alex's former teacher didn't even bother to change her written comments on his report card from year to year, sometimes copying the last report card word for word.

What infuriated her most, however, were the insinuations by school officials that she was racist whenever she complained.

``If I was prejudiced, I wouldn't have been there in the first place,'' Mongillo said. ``When I put him in, I thought, `It can't be that bad. This is Sausalito, not Brooklyn.' But I was totally shocked.''

Project Homecoming seeks to replace trustees Robert Holt, Gracie Grove, Dennis Elsasser, Teleatha Davis and Delores Talley.

The campaign started after the board rejected a demand by leaders of Project Homecoming to fire Superintendent Bill Redman and replace him with Shirley Thornton, former director of the troubled San Francisco Housing Authority.


LONG CAREER IN EDUCATION
Thornton, who was ousted from the Housing Authority after Mayor Willie Brown took office, has had a long career in school administration and now runs an educational consulting firm. She has lived in Marin City since 1967.

Her backers include Jeanne Gibbs and Judith Johnson, who run a company called CenterSource Systems, which publishes educational materials and trains teachers. One of their school programs, a cooperative learning system called Tribes, was offered to the district free of charge, but the board never took up the offer.

The recall leaders claim the five trustees failed to address problems, ignored parents who came to them with ideas and did nothing about children running loose in the classrooms.

In short, they say, the school board members -- three of whom are white -- have given up on the mostly disadvantaged Marin City students and accepted failure as the norm.

The board members insist they have done everything in their power to improve the situation, including the recent hiring of an audit firm to evaluate the district's schools, teachers and curriculum.

They characterize the recall leaders as self-serving bullies who are willing to spend on a recall election $45,000 to $80,000 that would otherwise be available for school programs.


HEADS ON THE BLOCK
Grove, who has been a school trustee for 14 years, and Elsasser say Project Homecoming's leaders are out to get them because they didn't adopt the group's programs or cave in to their demands. The irony, they say, is that their heads are on the chopping block even though no one ran against the incumbents in the past two school board elections.

``If there was such an outcry, where were they all when they had a chance to do something?'' said Elsasser. ``We've had board meetings where only two parents showed up. When people withhold their ideas until after a recall, it makes you wonder what the real motives are.''

What often gets lost in the angry rhetoric are the issues: How can the school district improve education?

The audit may provide some answers. Scheduled to begin in May and be completed around June or July, it will evaluate school finances, curriculum, teacher training, school administration and management, discipline policies and community involvement. A possible reconfiguration of the two schools will also be evaluated.


SLIM CHANCE OF RECALL
Political experts believe the chances of a successful recall are slim. If nothing else, however, the effort is focusing attention on the district's problems.

The one thing everybody agrees on is that more parents from both communities will have to get involved. The district is planning a community forum May 10 to discuss the issues.

Meanwhile, the bus stop in Sausalito is crowded every morning with school children waiting for a ride out of town.