Reader's Forum - Marin IJ - By Frances S. Nelson, Sausalito

Tuesday Readers' Forum - Marin IJ - By Reader Frances S. Nelson, Sausalito

Readers Opinion on Marin IJ stories about Sasualito Marin City Schools

'Bad press' does not help.

The recent series regarding the Sausalito-Marin schools was at best misleading, and at times bordered on the slanderous.

The high per-pupil cost was reiterated without any attempt to analyze the figures. This district is unusually small at 283 students. A district of 600 students would probably cost little more to operate. Certain expenses are inevitable in even the smallest district: a superintendent, custodial services, utilities and, especially, special education services. This district spends about $750,000, 20 percent of its budget, on federally mandated special education beyond the amount reimbursed.

Willow Creek Academy, praised for spending less per student, benefits from all these services as well. Was this factored into the "per pupil cost" comparison?

One parent who had chosen to send her child to private school was quoted as saying that "few if any students read at grade level." Did anyone ask the principal if this was correct? It is not.

In fact, some students read way above grade level. Those students who do not, whether at Bayside or Willow Creek, receive individual help from the resource teacher.

The most outrageous charge was from someone quoted as saying that "no one seems to care." I have observed while working part time at Bayside that every single adult working there: teachers, administrators, classroom aides, custodian, etc., cares very much about these children, and is trying hard to make their schooling work.

Some more affluent families elect to send their children to private schools. They can afford the choice. Many in this district cannot, though they are equally deserving of an excellent public education. I happen to believe that a multicultural environment is not only healthy, but part of a good education.

I am confident that as the schools in Sausalito-Marin City continue to improve (and test scores don't tell the whole story), families will come to realize this.

Unfortunately, bad press, such as these articles, do not help to convince people.

Frances S. Nelson, Sausalito

Article Launched: 06/27/2006 04:16:00 AM PDT

'Vision 900' is a worthwhile goal - Marin Voice - Marin IJ June 26, 2006 By George Stratigos

Article Launched: 06/26/2006 04:14:39 AM PDT
Vision 900 is a Worthwhile Goal
Monday Marin Voice
By George Stratigos
President, Sausalito Marin City School District



ALBERT EINSTEIN said that the definition of insanity was "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
Keenly aware of our history and steadfast in our determination not to see past mistakes repeated, today's school board believes that much needed change is beginning to occur. A lot of work is still ahead of us, but there is definitive evidence that we are moving in the right direction.

We know that the inertia of decades of disappointing results, like the forward motion of a supertanker, is not quickly reversed. But, as the IJ's special three-day series reported, there are reasons to believe that this long-awaited reversal has actually begun.

Certainly, the fact that test scores have doubled in recent years, that our district now employs a number of educators who are receiving county and state recognition for their work, the fact that this past school year saw a 10 percent increase in enrollment and, the approval by district voters of a first-ever bond measure to build a new middle school and a new kindergarten and first-grade pod, are all encouraging signs.

I have learned, along with my fellow board members, that problems faced by school trustees that came before us are not easily overcome. Our approach, however, is different and we are confident that in time it will continue to produce positive change.

The community has invested into this positive change. From tutoring to biking programs, from Rotary events to a reinvigorated PTA, the community is sharing in our belief that better days are ahead, and in many ways they have already arrived.

Our goal of "Vision 900," dismissed by some as a mere "slogan," is in reality an affirmation of our belief that in order to succeed we must do everything right. What that means is recognizing the simple fact that there is nothing more essential than a staff committed to educational excellence.

This school board has chosen to invest in institutions, not in quick solutions.

That means investing in staff because that kind of investment in time will make real change.

We began with test scores in the mid-300 range. This past year, our student average was in the low 700s.

At a 900 average, we will have test scores above that of any other school district in Marin County: that includes Ross Elementary, Tiburon's Reed and Del Mar schools and Kentfield's Bacich Elementary.

To be successful, however, lasting change cannot be incremental - it must be complete. We continue to search the nation for the most-qualified educators.

Our new district superintendent, who comes to us from Los Angeles Unified School District, is recognized for her ability, as the IJ reported, for turning underperforming schools into successful schools.

We know that we have had, and will continue to have, our doubters. There are many who believe that children from financially disadvantaged homes simply cannot achieve.

These views bring to mind another of Einstein's quotes: "Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen."

We don't subscribe to the "common sense" that says our children can't succeed. Access to a quality public education is the right of every child in our community.

Our citizens affirmed that belief when a super majority voted in support of a $15.9 million bond measure. We know that the road to Vision 900 is not an easy one. It is, however, the only road that is worthy of our efforts.

School board gets report on construction expense- Marin IJ - Staff- June 25,2006

School board gets report on construction expense
Marin IJ - June 26, 2006 Staff Report

The Sausalito Marin City School District board will hear from engineering consultants Monday on the higher than expected cost of constructing a new Martin Luther King Jr. Academy middle school in Marin City.
Construction is slated to begin in November. But the new structure may have to be stabilized at a cost of $1 million because it will be built on bay mud.

The meeting begins at 5 p.m. at district headquarters at 630 Nevada Street.

Spend money in classrooms - Reader Forum - June 24, 2006 Marin IJ - By Nancy Segale of San Rafael

Spend money in classrooms
Saturday Readers Forum
By Nancy Segale of San Rafael
Marin IJ
June 24, 2006

I worked for the Sausalito Marin City School District for 13 years and it looks like things have not changed.
I'm tired of the press, administration and the school board always negatively pointing their fingers at the teachers.

This group of teachers remains the mainstay in many of these children's lives. These kids bring a lot of emotional baggage to school, yet the board sees fit to cut aide time drastically.

To have only one adult in a classroom deprives these kids of the emotional and academic support they desperately need. The amount of time a teacher actually spends teaching is greatly decreased.

I find it interesting that the new math teacher from Tamalpais High School brings six high school students to assist him. That sure says a lot!

Eighteen percent of the district budget is spent on administration, but it can't seem to find the funds to hire much-needed counselors at both Bayside and Martin Luther King Academy.

What has district trustee George Stratigos been doing the last eight years, dreaming up "Vision 900?" If he really wanted the children to succeed, he would put more adults in the classroom (not fewer), hire counselors, have a principal/vice principal onsite at all times and have a discipline policy that is firmly adhered to.

And while he and his cronies are at it, maybe he could cut back on the out-of-state conferences and weekend retreats.

I say, keep the money in the classroom!

Nancy Segale, San Rafael

Teachers, Board Clash at Sausalito Marin City District- Marin IJ - June 24, 2006 by Don Speich

Teachers, board clash at Sausalito Marin City districtMarin IJ - June 25,2006
Don Speich

A teachers' representative lambasted Sausalito Marin City School District trustees for excluding teachers in decision-making, failing to communicate and unfairly blaming them for failing to adequately educate students.
Deborah Moore, a resource specialist who said she spoke on behalf of the district teachers' association, told the Board of Trustees on Thursday that a recent series of articles in the Independent Journal put the district's 12 teachers in an unfavorable and inaccurate light.

It was unfair, she said, because teachers repeatedly are shut out of attempts to improve instruction.

"Many of the issues mentioned in the articles come down to decision-making," she told the board. "The teachers of the school district are excluded from the decision-making process, but are often left to shoulder the blame when poor decisions are made."

She cited as an example the board's campaign, "Vision 900," referring to the goal of raising district API scores from the current 692, the lowest in the county, to a level rivaling the best districts in Marin.

"In the case of 'Vision 900,' our input was not requested, but as always we accepted the challenge and in many cases met or surpassed expectation, yet we are told we are not good enough," she said.

"We have jumped through every hoop but each time the configuration of those hoops changes. From our perspective, the school board has systemically crafted a system designed to have us fail."

Trustee Whitney Hoyt said, "We have tiny classes, so when I'm asked what's going on I'm looking at the teachers. With small class sizes we should not have (student) reading levels two or three grades behind.

"I think teachers are responsible. If anyone can do it, it is the teachers. If it isn't happening, I look at the teachers."

Sausalito Marin City teachers are the highest-paid in the county, with an average salary in 2004-05 of $70,981 compared with the Marin average of $58,256. The district has three schools, an annual budget of almost $5 million, an enrollment of 283 K-8 students, and a pupil-to-teacher ratio of 14 to 1. Per pupil expenditure is $22,232, three times the state average.

Still, more than 50 percent of the district's students fail to graduate from high school - sparking an attempt by trustees to turn around the district's educational program.

Key to this, trustees have said, is assuring that classroom instruction gives students a mastery of basic academic skills in reading, writing and mathematics.

Trustees two months ago hired a new superintendent, Debra Bradley, who specializes in raising test scores through improvements in curriculum and teaching methods.

Board President George Stratigos, speaking on the telephone from his family home in Aegina, Greece, expressed disappointment that district teachers felt excluded. "We are a team," he said.

However, citing the series in the Independent Journal, he said, "The articles were a mixed bag and that is because we are in a confusing time, a time of change."

He said the board is looking at "instructional change and that means strengthening our teaching staff."

Stratigos, referring to the district's decision to reduce the number of instructional aides in classrooms - a move opposed by the teachers - added, "I would like to see more teachers on our staff; these are the best people to be teaching students.

"Change is confusing but change is what we have to do."

Teachers were steadfast in their objections to how change is coming about.

"Isn't it time to recognize that teachers are the credentialed professionals, and trust us to do the job we were hired to do?" Moore asked. "As teachers, we entered the profession of education because our hope, moral intention, and goal are to assist children in every way possible in maximizing their educational life.

"The stakes are currently higher than they've ever been and we are working tirelessly to fulfill and exceed these expectations.

"However, the job becomes increasingly more difficult when the board micromanages everyone else's job, especially when they have not created a dialogue with teachers."

As part of the board's reform effort, it spent $23,200 for a consultant to evaluate preschool programs in the county, a move aimed at determining which offered instruction best suited to prepare preschoolers for success in the primary grades.

Behind the move was a dissatisfaction by trustees with the programs run by Community Action Marin for more than 30 years in Marin City. Those programs have repeatedly received high marks from the state Department of Education.

The consultant, Deborah T. Simon, told the board all programs in Marin County were good, including Community Action Marin's. She said the board should work with the agency to make sure what staffers are teaching students is what is needed when they enter kindergarten.

Contact Don Speich via e-mail at dspeich@marinij.com

School Board's Formidable Task - Marin IJ Editorial - June 18, 2006

Article Launched: 06/18/2006 04:19:00 AM PDT

School board's formidable task
Marin IJ Editorial
June, 18 2006

EVEN Sausalito Marin City School District trustees admit their schools are not shining examples of public schools at their best. They do, however, share a strong commitment to building academic achievement among students and public confidence among taxpayers.
Still, despite the fact that the district spends $22,232 per student - more than three times the amount spent in Novato's public schools - and its class sizes are small, the district's 283 students perform well below state standards. Too many of these children are being left behind, but it's not because the district lacks the financial resources.

That level of taxpayer support could lead one to ask an intriguing question: Would those students be better off if that $22,232 was used to enroll them in a private school?

While the local community supports the Sausalito Marin City schools politically, approving a recent $15.9 million bond measure, many parents are sending their children elsewhere, either to the district's charter schools, to local private schools or to other public districts through transfers.

Our concept of strong public schools has been a stark failure in the Sausalito Marin City district for decades.

The current district leadership says it is committed to turning things around. It is no easy task. In fact, some board members have been working on it since they won the stormy "Project Homecoming" recall vote in 1997. Since then, they have received political support from district taxpayers who have endorsed tax es and bonds, but most parents in the district still aren't sending their kids to district schools. Ultimately, they are voting with their feet.

The district has thrown staggering amounts of money at this problem without dramatic results, which indicates that money alone isn't the answer. If it was, there wouldn't be a problem.

The district includes Sausalito, one of Marin's most affluent cities, and Marin City, one of Marin's poorest communities. The racial divide is as stark as the economic differences.

District leaders cite a recent upturn in test scores as evidence the district is headed in the right direction. School board President George Stratigos says he's committed to rebuilding district schools, to bringing Sausalito kids back to Sausalito's public schools.

The district's plan, Vision 900, has an ambitious goal of lifting academic achievement well above the state standard to rank among Marin's top schools. Stratigos also wants enrollment to grow to 600 students, more than doubling this year's enrollment of 283.

That commitment is encouraging and deserves community support.

Building public confidence in the district's schools, decades of decline, is no easy task. It will take years of significant and consistent improvement before skeptical parents have enough faith in the district to return.

We should all root for Sausalito Marin City School District trustees to succeed because every child deserves a quality education.

In Search of Solutions - Marin IJ - June 13, 2006 - By Don Speich and Jennifer Gollan

In search of solutions
Marin IJ - June 13, 2006
By Don Speich and Jennifer Gollan

The day's lesson was about food costs and utility bills and rent and car payments and, of course, gas prices, and math teacher Dave Wetzel was using it as a way to introduce his Marin City students to the Xs and Ys of rudimentary algebra.
Wetzel is a pioneer, the first Tamalpais High School teacher to teach part-time at Martin Luther King Jr. middle school in hopes of stemming a high school dropout rate of more than 50 percent.

In an effort to kick-start an educational program that has failed for decades to teach its students the basic skills needed for academic success, the Sausalito Marin City School District is embarking on a plan to succeed where previous efforts have failed.

It has named a new superintendent who has a track record of raising performance as measured by standardized tests. It will begin construction later this year of a state-of-the-art middle school in Marin City. It is studying preschool programs to ascertain which is best to assure success in district schools, and it is refocusing its curriculum in a way that will better meet state standards.

Bringing a high school teacher to the middle school is an effort that requires a special brand of teacher with the patience to kindle interest among students, some of whom, Wetzel says, come to class feeling that because they would no doubt fail, why even try.

Wetzel recently used the cost of living as a tool to get his 15 students to within striking distance of algebra by adding and dividing and subtracting the amount of money it takes daily, weekly, monthly and yearly to keep them and their families afloat.

The Tam math teacher, assisted by six Tam High seniors who have volunteered their time, said that since he first arrived last fall the students had made great progress.

"It's like night and day," he said.

At work are short attention spans - 10 to 15 seconds, he said - "which is directly related to success in school." He keeps them focused through a subtle blend of leniency and discipline - giving them a short rope to momentarily mentally roam and then pleasantly but firmly pulling it back to the subject at hand.

A group of students was sitting at a table with Wetzel figuring the cost of bread and pizzaand collard greens and juice, when one of them got up, moved to an empty table behind and laid her head on the table. Wetzel didn't even look up, but after a minute or so, said, finally looking at her, "We need you over here. Will you add this?" The student moved back to the table and added up the items, correctly.

It is this program that Sausalito Marin City school trustees point to most frequently as a sign of forward movement.

But other efforts considered important by most educators - such as increasing parental participation and improving classroom instruction through hands-on involvement from administrators as well as teachers - are less defined.

In all, say officials, solutions are a work in progress - much as they have been, with little to show for it, stretching back several decades.

Still, there appears to be no lack of commitment on the part of district officials to make it work. It is virtually all they talk about.

Seeking solutions

At a recent Sausalito Marin City trustees meeting, for example, the questions were often and varied but always aimed at the same thing: finding ways to unlock all possible doors to learning for a bunch of kids who not infrequently go on to high school reading poorly if at all.

Trustees George Stratigos, Whitney Hoyt, Shirley Thornton and Tom Clark asked question after question of staff about programs to reduce suspension and improve retention rates, enhance instruction, involve parents and broaden the educational experience of the district's 285 students.

The mood was familiar, informal, cordial but intensely focused - not on budgets, not on facilities planning, not on the endless bureaucratic demands so often the subject of trustee meetings in other less troubled districts. Here the only subject was low-achieving kids and learning, and how to overcome the socio-economic handicaps of the former so they can be unimpeded in their pursuit of the latter.

"Only 13 percent of eighth-graders are reading at grade level," said Hoyt, who also is principal at Mill Valley Middle School.

And referring to what all too often is the case, she said, "In the seventh grade if a kid can't read they are going to fail (in high school). I've seen too many kids go to Tam (High School) who can't read."

Said Carolyn Paxton, the district's assistant superintendent: "At MLK too few students have demonstrated improvement. I feel like we are dooming them not to be successful in high school."

It's a challenge as old as Brown vs. the Board of Education, the landmark 1954 Supreme Court ruling that separate is not equal, unlocking desegregation across the country in an attempt to give blacks the same chance at a quality of life enjoyed by others. But what was not immediately understood, experts later would agree, were the complexities inherent in providing something so seemingly fundamental as education to a group that had been denied so much for so long.

It was like giving someone a treasure chest filled with gold but not having the key to unlock it, experts say.

Fifty-two years later, the challenge to one degree or another remains - including in Marin City, where experts say many children have no frames of reference or parental models to provide the foundation for learning that is essential. So, alternatives either have to be tried or ways found to engage parents - often a single parent who may hold more than one job and no time for anything else.

Parental involvement vital

Bruce Fuller, a professor of education at the University of California at Berkeley, said there is evidence that the earlier parents are involved in the process the better it is for their children.

"I think Head Start, in trying to work with kids at younger ages, is potentially promising for poor African American kids," he said.

"If (educators) can work with parents as kids are going through toddlerhood and try to encourage them to read with their kids and see child development as a project that needs to be attended to, it can encourage growth and maybe even de-mystify schools for poor parents."

A survey of principals and teachers in 257 California schools serving low-income students by EdSource, an independent not-for-profit educational think tank in Palo Alto, concluded that success as measured by the state's Academic Performance Index scores is dependent on a focused educational program, hands-on principals and teachers who emphasize curriculum approved by the state.

Additionally, the survey, conducted last year, found that academic success was more likely than not if a district had highly motivated teachers who took "responsibility for student achievement and believed the school has well-defined plans for instructional improvement and wide alignment and consistency in curriculum and instruction that is based upon state academic standards."

Stronger PTAs sought

All efforts at academically improving schools, educators say, require both patience and persistence and, most importantly, an understanding that progress must be measured in the smallest of increments - Parent Teacher Associations, for example.

Most public schools in California and elsewhere have PTAs, most of them filled with an overflow of parents eager to be a part of their children's education. At Sausalito Marin City, the PTA has been struggling with one or two parents.

PTA President Juanita Edwards said that over the past few weeks membership had grown to six parents of children at both Bayside and MLK.

She said she has been working with the head of the 16th District (Marin County) PTA representative, who has been offering suggestions aimed at increasing membership.

Included, said Edwards, the parent of an MLK seventh-grader, is providing child care for parents who attend PTA meetings and convincing parents that they can provide help in a variety of ways - stuffing envelopes, making phone calls - that does not require them to leave their homes in the evening.

Edwards, a director of Marin Network, a Marin City group aimed at helping parents and others in Marin City, said that at a recent potluck dinner meeting "packed" with parents she recruited three who were "excited" to become PTA members.

Trustrees at a recent school board meeting were enthusiastic when Edwards told them the news.

"It's a good sign when parents are getting more active," Hoyt said.

Stratigos said the district for years has been overly involved with state and federally funded programs, many of them products of President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society legislation of the 1960s, which he said are often at cross purposes and ill-defined.

His idea is to create a district focused on one thing only: the notion that all children are capable of obtaining a quality education as long as expectations are high and teachers and administrators are capable and committed to successfully teaching the skills basic to critical thinking and essential to academic success through college.

It is a deficiency in these skills - reading, writing, mathematics - that has doomed most of the district's eighth-grade graduates to failure in high school, say officials of both Sausalito Marin City and the Tam high school district.

Moving forward

Marin Schools Superintendent Mary Jane Burke said she believes things are on the upswing at Sausalito Marin City schools.

"In my mind the district is in fact making progress and moving forward," she said. "The challenges, while long-standing, are being addressed. It feels different. They are setting a target (of high test scores) and looking at both ends of the district." She was referring to trustee decisions to use Tam High School teachers at MLK and to examine the quality of preschool programs.

Trustees say they are committed to raising the expectations of teachers as well as students, believing that academic excellence is possible if students are made to believe they can be successful in school.

Debra Bradley, the district's new superintendent, who has been on the job for six weeks, declined to detail what she hoped to accomplish in her new position, even though trustees are known to have wanted her, at least in part, because of a reputation for being able to raise the test scores of districts with a high concentration of minority students.

Bradley would say only that she was meeting with teachers, students, other administrators, and parents to gain an understanding of what might be needed.

Trustees have adopted the slogan "Vision 900," a target of 900 on the state Academic Performance Index, a student test score achievement that would put the district in the rarified air of the best in Marin and California. The district's API this year was 692, the lowest in the county.

"If teachers believe all kids can learn and place high demands on kids it goes a long way," said UC Berkeley's Fuller, who lives in Kentfield. "The death knell in a lot of districts like Marin's is that idealistic teachers had expectations 20 to 30 years ago that were high. Now they have plummeted."

Segregated and excellent?

How to successfully teach minority students from poor economic backgrounds is a question that has vexed educators for decades. Busing was aimed at breaking down the barriers to learning by placing black children next to white children in classrooms, but it became the casualty of more than three decades of fiery emotion, overextended promises and premature proclamations of failure.

The end result of various attempts to turn things around at Sausalito Marin City schools since 1964 - including a brief attempt at desgregating its schools when there were enough white children in the district to do it - is a racially segregated, low academically achieving district.

Stratigos acknowledges the district is attempting to prove the exception to the Warren Court ruling that separate is not equal - he hopes to spin the legal and educational axiom on its head by taking it a step further and making the district better than any of Marin's other, predominantly white school districts.

To a suggestion that decades of experience and research augur against this, Stratigos replied: "The board is blind to history."

Contact Don Speich via e-mail at dspeich@marinij.com

FOCUSED: Tam High math teacher Dave Wetzel works with Rodneisha Earl (left), Whitney Polk (second from right) and Christine Celestine (right) at Martin Luther King Jr. Academy middle school as part of program to better prepare Sausalito Marin City students for high school. (IJ photo/Robert Tong)

Two Tales Of Defying The Odds - Marin IJ - June 13, 2006 - By Jennifer Gollan and Don Speich

Two tales of defying the odds
Marin IJ - June 13, 2006
by Jennifer Gollan and Don Speich

Derek Smith's ascent to an executive post is all the more remarkable given that many of his friends who attended the Sausalito Marin City schools with him in the 1970s are unemployed or jailed.

This year, Smith founded Marinship Development Interest Corp., a San Francisco-based real estate company named after a former Sausalito shipyard where his grandparents worked during World War II.

"I can't name one friend that has succeeded," said Smith, 39, of Oakland.

That's because many Marin City children lack role models, he said.

"Most of the kids in Marin City come from single-parent households, and they aren't always headed in the right direction in terms of having a respect for the educational system."

Growing up, Smith befriended children of disparate socio-economic backgrounds, whether it was through Little League or local public and private schools. After Martin Luther King Jr. Academy, Smith attended the Branson School for two years, before graduating from Redwood High School.

He said that besides his father, a trucker, his friends' parents embodied a model to strive for.

"College was nothing that my parents had ever done," Smith said. "But growing up with my friends from Sausalito, it was something that I had to do. Most of my role models were the parents of my friends in Sausalito."

One parent in particular, Peter Stocker, who founded Pacific Union Real Estate Co., was most influential in inspiring Smith to plot his future.

Smith attended the University of California at Berkeley, where he graduated with a mechanical engineering degree, and then Stanford University, where he earned a master's in civil engineering.

Socio-economic challenges aside, Smith believes he is proof that Sausalito Marin City schools can work.

"If you wanted to work hard and get educated it was do-able then, and I am sure it is do-able now," he said. "It is a two-way street. You have to want to be prepared to continue on."

La Donna Bonner, 34, of Marin City, agrees.

She attended middle school in Sausalito Marin City before graduating from Tamalpais High School. She earned a degree in humanities from Dominican University. Now a candidate for a master's in education degree at Dominican, Bonner's thesis this year will examine ways to improve parent participation in the Sausalito Marin City School District.

Simultaneously, Bonner is earning two credentials, one to become a teacher, the other, a resource specialist, allowing her to work with special education students. She says she would like to give back to her community by becoming a teacher in the Sausalito Marin City School District, where one of her three children attends the Willow Creek charter school. The others attend private schools in San Francisco.

She is already on her way to supporting her hometown, where her single mother raised Bonner and her 13 siblings. Bonner is the project coordinator for Marin City School Readiness, a First Five Marin program that encourages Marin City and Sausalito parents to participate in their children's early education.

"It is important because it has been proven over and over that parent involvement increases students' achievement, socially, emotionally, physically," she said. "Students in our community need to achieve academically so they can get out of the situations that they are in."

And Bonner wants to help.

"I want to give back to the community that has given so much to me, and helped support me to get to where I am," Bonner said.

Bonner attributes her success to her mother, who she said encouraged her to use school as a launching pad.

"We didn't always have a three-course meal to eat, but my mom knew what was important. ... She emphasized doing well in school because that will be your key to getting out of poverty."

Now it is Bonner who is encouraging her three children - Jessica Times, 15, a freshman at St. Ignatius School in San Francisco; Jazmine Times, 14, a seventh-grader at The Sterne School in San Francisco; and Stephen Bonner, 11, a fifth-grader at Willow Creek - to do their best in school.

"The same thing that my mom taught me, I tell my kids to do the best that you can do," Bonner said. "As long as you put forth the effort, then I am OK with that. I don't pressure them to be scholars, just to do their best. That makes mommy proud."

Contact Don Speich via e-mail at dspeich@marinij.com

Photo
SUCCESS: La Donna Bonner (center) shares a lighthearted moment with her children Stephen (left), Jazmine and Jessica (right) in their Marin City home. Bonner, 34, grew up as one of 14 children in Marin CIty, attended Sausalito Marin City schools and is now earning her teaching credential and a master's degree in education from Dominican University. She wants to be a teacher in the Sausalito Marin City School District to give back to the community. ( IJ photo/Jeff Vendsel)

Derek Smith, 39, this year founded Marinship Development Interest Corp., a San Francisco-based real estate company. His grandparents worked at the Sausalito shipyard in World War II. (IJ photo/Jeff Vendsel)

Charter school offers parents another choice - Marin IJ - June 12, 2006 - Jennifer Gollan and Don Speich

Charter school offers parents another choice
Jennifer Gollan and Don Speich


Willow: Students Elijanae James (left) and Abby Camaren work on a project during class at Willow Creek, a charter school in Sausalito. (IJ photo/Robert Tong)

Now in its fifth year, the Willow Creek charter school in the Sausalito Marin City School District has distinguished itself with a project-based approach to learning, mandatory parent participation and multiracial classrooms.
"We're really committed to providing kids with what California students had in the '70s," said Carol Cooper, Willow Creek's principal. "We are working with the kids really hard to improve."

The school earned a score of 709 on the state's Academic Performance Index in 2005. The API, which ranges from a low of 200 to a high of 1,000, is derived from a series of state tests administered each spring. The school's score last year was the second-highest score in the district behind Bayside School, which earned an API score of 723. The state's benchmark is an API of 800.

Willow Creek was established in 2001 as a charter school, which is publicly funded but independently operated. Parents began pushing for the charter in 1999 because they were frustrated with the quality of education in the district.

"The main thrust to Willow Creek's education is an emphasis on the basics and a strong commitment to project-based learning and environmental education," said Lisa Goodrich-Boyd, acting president of the Parent Council, which represents 90 families at the school. "For parents who really want to send their kids to a public school, it is kind of taking that leap. Especially in Sausalito, where we have a lot of families who do not send their kids to the public schools here.

"As a parent, it is encouraging," said Goodrich-Boyd, whose son is a second-grader at Willow Creek. "It is really the best of public school education - it is what it is supposed to be. Our school offers children the ability to interact with the world that they will see when they are adults. It encourages them to learn the academic skills, but also the social skills they need, which is being able to interact with multiethnic groups and different socio-economic groups."

Willow Creek officials say the school's ultimate success will depend on its parental support and its innovative approach to curricula.

Willow Creek spends about $6,500 per student annually, putting it far behind the average of $22,232 spent on each pupil in Sausalito's traditional public schools. The disparity in per-student expenditures is largely attributed to the district's higher administrative, payroll and special education costs, Cooper said.

About 21 of its 138 K-8 students, or 15 percent, are from low-income families. By contrast, about 55 percent of the district's students are from low-income families.

Parents are required to volunteer at Willow Creek 50 to 70 hours a year, depending on how many of their children attend the school. Throughout the year, parents fulfill their volunteer commitment either by helping with administrative tasks in the school's office, ferrying children to field trips or distributing students' lunches.

"Parent participation is the most critical component, so requiring parent participation allows us to be selective in terms of the parents that care, and we all believe that if you have parents who care enough to put time and energy into the school, you will get better results," said Mark Trotter, one of nine members on the Willow Creek School Board, and a former Sausalito Marin City trustee.

Also, about 20 percent of Willow Creek's students are bused to school from outside the district, including Richmond and elsewhere. An equal number of students hail from both Marin City and Sausalito, Cooper said.

The school's racial makeup is diverse: 30 percent of the students are black, 27 percent are white, 27 percent are Hispanic, 7 percent are Asian, and about 9 percent are either multiracial or are unaccounted for in state figures.

By contrast, in the Sausalito Marin City School District black students account for about 54 percent of the enrollment; white students, 16 percent; Hispanics, 18 percent; Asians, 6 percent; and about 6 percent were either multiracial or unaccounted for in state figures.

"We have a much larger racial mix from Marin," Cooper said. "I assume it's something about the program that attracts them (parents)."

On a recent school day, children of different races sat hovered over math problems and intently followed the teachers' spelling lessons.

In one classroom, eighth-graders showed a visitor an example of the school's project-based learning, called "Making History." Students in grades six through eight had built a map dotted with various symbols representing where their assigned teams had traded wares or weapons or food, all in an effort to advance their civilizations and to learn about early history. Students reflected on their day-to-day experiences with the projects in journals so teachers could monitor their progress.

"It gets them excited about the process of learning," Trotter said. "These kids aren't memorizing facts and figures, they are learning what shapes a civilization. They are turned on by it. It is a brilliant way to teach."

Cooper agreed, and added that the school had not caved to mounting pressure on public schools to improve API scores by limiting lessons to test content versus projects, art and other subjects.

"We absolutely don't teach to the test, but we include state standards," Cooper said. "I'm hopeful we'll continue our upward march."

The school has taken a hard line with discipline, which this year has meant no expulsions, down from a few last year.

"We have made it really clear to the teachers that it is their classroom," Trotter said. "So if a student is being disruptive, it is their job to get the kids out of the classroom. What we are trying to do is put as much control as possible in the hands of the teachers for discipline."

Students who repeatedly misbehave are written up by the teacher. Beyond that, students could be referred to Cooper's office. Two suspensions triggers an automatic meeting with the school board and their parents.

Contact Don Speich via e-mail at dspeich@marinij.com

Public school exodus - Marin IJ - June 12, 2006-Jennifer Gollan and Don Speich

Public school exodusJennifer Gollan and Don Speich


Poor academic achievement in the Sausalito Marin City School District has rendered the concept of public neighborhood schools largely meaningless as dozens of children in the district, both black and white, flock to private schools.
Even the district's relative wealth - it spends $22,232 per pupil annually, more than three times the state average - is not enough to coax students into the district.

"They are really being deprived of an education," said Marin City resident Catherine Shine, whose youngest daughter, Olivia, 6, attends private St. Patrick School in Larkspur, and oldest, Ashley, 13, briefly attended the district's Willow Creek charter school before attending Mill Valley Middle School.

"These kids are getting a (poor) education and nobody seems to care. I can't figure out where the money goes."

George Stratigos, president of the Sausalito Marin City School District Board, said Shine's complaint sounds familiar.

"Those were my words from 10 years ago," he said.

Nearly a decade ago, Stratigos led "Project Homecoming," a successful recall campaign of the school board that culminated in his ascent to the position of board president. In an interview at the time, he vowed to change "the long-standing culture of failure of the Sausalito Schools District to a culture for excellence."

In effect, Stratigos said, his goal was to attract would-be private school students to the public schools.

Today, Stratigos and another recall proponent-turned-trustee, Shirley Thornton, invoke nearly identical language to describe the district's condition.

"Our progress is in creating schools of excellence," Stratigos said. "We are not concentrating on returning people back. We are creating schools that kids want to return

PRIVATE MOMENT: Jade Zeeman, 8, and her mother, Matt, read together in their Sausalito home. Jade's parents enrolled her in private school instead of sending her to a Sausalito public school. (IJ photo/Alan Dep) to."

Stratigos said once the district achieves its plan of "Vision 900" - a score of 900 out of 1,000 on the state's Academic Performance Index - he would like to see the district enrollment double to 600 in the next three to five years.

"The next goal will be the return of the community to the schools," he said.

The district has a long way to go, many parents say.

"I don't want my son to be a petri dish," Sausalito resident Cindi Osborn said of her son, Luke, 3. "I don't want to take a chance that it will get better. É It is frustrating that we have such poor public schools that the parents are forced to either move or pay thousands of dollars a year per child for private school, and they continue to pay taxes into a school system that doesn't serve them."

Most disturbing, Osborn said, is the exodus of parents from Sausalito when their children turn 2 or 3 years old.

No official figures are available on the number of children in Sausalito and Marin City attending private schools. But residents say many families move away to avoid the schools.

Stratigos, a former city councilman who grew up in Sausalito, said that based on anecdotal evidence, he estimates 50 families a year leave Sausalito and Marin City in search of better schools. That has been happening for at least 10 years, he said.

"It is driving home prices down," said Greg Carrasco, a longshoreman in Sausalito, whose 9-year-old son attends St. Patrick School. "Young families know that you don't move to Sausalito if you have kids. They will pay an extra $10,000 per year for the rest of their lives (for their kids) to go to private schools."

In 1990, the school district was evenly split between blacks and whites. Now, just 15 percent

After commuting from Marin City, Catherine Shine walks her daughter Olivia, 6, toward St. Patrick Elementary, a private Catholic school in Larkspur. (IJ photo/Erin Lubin)

of the 283 students is white.

When Matt and Mark Zeeman moved to Sausalito from South Africa seven years ago, the couple chose to send their 8-year-old daughter, Jade, to St. Patrick School for the rigorous academic program, and because their daughter, who is white, would have been a minority in the Sausalito public schools.

"I wouldn't want to send my child there," Matt Zeeman said. "There are not enough white kids there. There wasn't enough diversity, like equal portions of everyone."

Kathryn Strietmann, a Sausalito illustrator, said things have changed since she briefly attended Sausalito schools as a child.

She sends her two children to private schools, which she says offer individual attention and strong academic programs. Her son, Albert, is in fourth grade at Laurel School in San Francisco, and her daughter, Frances, is in the first grade at Marin Montessori School in Corte Madera.

"You have that fantasy about public schools: It would be nice if they were more diverse," Strietmann said, adding that it is difficult to get wealthy people in Sausalito to send their children to low-achieving schools.

Strietmann said she struggled with the decision, and knew that if she sent her children to the Sausalito public schools, it would improve racial integration in the schools and would "make the world a better place."

"Family Gap" Motivates Board President - Marin IJ - June, 12 2006 - Don Speich

'Family gap' motivates board president
Don Speich

When George Stratigos was a kid in Sausalito in the 1960s and '70s his parents, like many, took extraordinary steps to keep him out of the city's schools. They sent him to a Catholic school in Greece for the early grades.

Though he and his family continued to live in Sausalito, they claimed he resided in San Rafael by giving the address of family owned property, so he could attend middle school in Terra Linda.

He went on to Terra Linda High School and was elected a student representative to the San Rafael school board - and still he lived in Sausalito.

Stratigos, 45, said every morning he would get on a bus in Sausalito filled with Sausalito kids, all heading for public and private schools elsewhere in Marin. Nobody he knew went to Sausalito schools, where the students were predominantly black and from Marin City.

He graduated from Terra Linda High School in 1979.

Though he did not know it at the time, the daily exodus he was part of prompted a vision that would ultimately consume him in middle age: reversing the course of a decades-old history by returning Sausalito kids to Sausalito schools.
Or, as he puts it, "to fill the gap" that has crippled the picturesque bayside community by reducing its inhabitants to only young adults or older residents with either no children or ones well past school age.

"There is a gap, the young family gap," he said. "We have young families who live here until their children are 5 and then they move away."

There are no young middle-age families who, he said, are "the heart" of any community, and until this "gap" is filled, Sausalito will continue in a downward spiral, a city in search of a strong pulse that will assure a vibrant future.
And that will be impossible with a failing school system, Stratigos decided.

He was a member of the Sausalito City Council in the mid-1990s when this realization hit him, and he said it became increasingly clear that city government was and would continue to be impotent until there were successful schools, ones that would allow the town's young families to remain in Sausalito.

It is this age group of adults, he said, that provides the energy and leadership and vision for vibrant communities elsewhere in Marin. Without them, a town's history becomes static, a circle where past, present and future are one and the same.
So Stratigos set his sights on the district, and decided that before anything good could happen, the leadership must be replaced. Along with current trustee Shirley Thornton and others, he kicked off a 1997 campaign to recall trustees.

The campaign turned on replacing repeated failures of the past with programs that would raise test scores and thereby - this was implicit and never directly stated - create schools white parents would want for their children.

Thornton was elected to the board in 1998 and Stratigos in 2000.

Nine years later, though test scores have improved somewhat, young white families continue to move out of the district or send their children elsewhere to school.
But if this is disappointing to Stratigos, it is difficult to detect.

Stratigos is a believer and an optimist, a man driven to turn the schools around. His strength of conviction reflects perhaps his continuing closeness to his family, deep involvement in the Greek Orthodox Church and roots in a learning tradition as old as Socrates and Plato.

Linda Remy, a former member of the Marin Healthcare District board, has known Stratigos for many years and thinks he is the right man for the job.

"I actually think he is one of the most creative guys in Marin County," she said.
He is "passionate" in his beliefs "and just puts his heart and soul into whatever he does." He is, she added, "working very, very hard to eliminate the racial inequities there."

Over the years, Stratigos, who graduated from San Francisco State University with a bachelor's degree in business administration, has worked in a variety of positions, among them the head of a successful $50 million fund-raising drive for the University of Pacific's dental school in San Francisco.

For relaxation, Stratigos, who is not married, often goes to his family home on the island of Aegina, a short distance southwest of Athens, where his parents met before getting married in San Francisco and settling in Sausalito.

"Greece has been a great place to go because it teaches me about community," he said.
It is there, he said, that he learned first-hand the value of a place where there is no gap between generations.

Contact Don Speich via e-mail at dspeich@marinij.com

A puzzling legacy - Marin IJ - June 11, 2006- By Don Speich and Jennifer Gollan

A puzzling legacy
By Don Speich and Jennifer Gollan

Marin IJ - June 11, 2006

Christine Celestine concentrates during her eighth-grade class at Martin Luther King Jr. Academy in Marin City. The Sausalito Marin City School District is trying to improve decades of poor scores. (IJ photo/Frankie Frost)

It is by far the wealthiest school district in Marin, spending more than $22,000 per student - three times the state average and among the highest in the nation.
Yet its students have the lowest test scores in the county. More than half never graduate high school.

Its teachers have among the smallest classes in Marin and are the county's highest paid, earning an average of $71,000 a year.

Yet critics often target the teachers as part of the problem.

Most students are from low-income families and live in federally subsidized housing.

Yet they are surrounded by residents with some of the highest incomes and priciest homes in California.

It is the Sausalito Marin City School District, a 283-student, predominantly minority school system where efforts to succeed can be measured in decades, but where now - energized by voters' support and a new mantra to achieve - administrators are spearheading an ambitious effort to turn a tide of failure.

"A lot of money has been wasted on unfocused programs," said George Stratigos, president of the school board. "The question is: How many generations of kids' lives have been wasted?"

Led by Stratigos, a Sausalito native and former city councilman whose own parents sent him to private school outside the district, the board is hiring new administrators they believe will help raise test scores, focusing curriculum on basic academic skills and setting its sights on test scores achieved by only a handful of Marin schools.

It is spending a $15.9 million voter-approved bond to rebuild Martin Luther King Jr. Academy in Marin City and renovate Bayside Elementary School in Sausalito, import a Tamalpais High School math teacher to supplement instruction and embark on a formal teacher training program focused on student discipline.

It is struggling to reinvent itself.

"We need to look at how to change a culture, and rebuild hope and confidence, and build a program that allows these students to be successful," said Bob Ferguson, superintendent of the Tamalpais Union High School District.

Despite years of hopeful rhetoric and promises of academic improvement, the district remains where it has been for decades: mired in its history, going nowhere.

The district - which includes predominantly white, affluent Sausalito and predominantly black, low-income Marin City - has struggled with issues of race and academic achievement since at least the 1960s, when it was targeted by both the Congress of Racial Equality for being segregated and the Black Panther Party for having no black studies classes or programs like those implemented at schools and colleges throughout the country in the late '60s.


Enrollment plunges

Enrollment at the district's three schools was reshuffled to accomplish racial balance, black studies courses and programs were instituted - and academic achievement, as measured by test scores, began to fall. Student enrollment, which was 1,227 in 1960, dropped to 710 in 1970 - a slide that continued over the next three decades to 283 - as white parents, and then black, moved or sent their children to private schools.

As the student body became increasingly minority from low-income families, the schools became eligible for hefty federal and state funds aimed at raising academic achievement.

In 1974, a Marin County grand jury report called the district's per-pupil expenditures "exorbitant," test scores low despite the lowest student-teacher ratio in the county and teacher salaries excessively high.

Nearly 10 years ago, national auditors - echoing many of the same findings as the 1974 grand jury - diagnosed the Sausalito Marin City schools as broken, despite ample funding.

Teachers were "frustrated, distressed and exhausted" and "instruction had taken a back seat," auditors said. They urged the district to raise expectations of students, saying, "People have to believe that failure is not an option."

The audits led to a recall campaign that resulted in recall leaders Shirley Thornton, and a few years later, Stratigos, being elected to the board. They said they were galvanized by the district's low test scores, as well as poor leadership and classroom discipline. They promised change.

Change has been elusive.

"I have been puzzled ever since 1969 on this," said Michael Kirst, a professor of education at Stanford University who visited the district 37 years ago. "The same problems that were there at that time are the same they have today."


Defining the problems

Lack of parental involvement, discipline challenges and enrollment turnover are among the obstacles to student learning, district officials say.
Some parents say teachers are worn out and the board out of touch; others say teachers' aides keep order in classrooms while teachers carry on uninspired lessons year after year.

Critics include parents such as Yolanda Morgan, who attended Marin City schools in the 1970s and has two children, one at Bayside and one at MLK.

She's convinced that neither they nor their classmates are learning much.

"Education is not right, it's terrible," said Morgan, a Marin City resident. She said few if any of the district's students are reading at grade level.

Morgan graduated from Tamalpais High School and credits her success to "a couple of teachers" there who helped her. She said her son, who is about to graduate from the eighth grade, is worried about going to Tam "because his reading level is not up to par."

Teaching assistants are the school disciplinarians, said La Donna Bonner of Marin City, who worked as an assistant in the district for four years until June last year. She is earning her teaching credential at Dominican University and works intermittently as a substitute teacher in the district.

"The teachers need help keeping the classrooms under control," said Bonner, a project coordinator for the Marin City School Readiness program that encourages Marin City and Sausalito parents to get involved in the early education of their children. "Behavior is an issue; kids get in there and act silly."

That's because many students are bored and many teachers

Photo here
D'George Hines of Marin City, who will be junior class president at Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley this fall, says he struggled academically in his freshman year. He says he simply wasn't prepared. (IJ photo/Alan Dep)

"tired," she said. "A lot of them need to retire."

Poor achievement has plagued the schools despite ample funding, leading some to point the finger at teachers and students' challenging home environment, said Whitney Hoyt, a member of the Sausalito Marin City board and principal of nearby Mill Valley Middle School.

"The district has sufficient resources for the kids, so there are other issues that have created a population that is not achieving," Hoyt said. "It's a combination of teachers that aren't teaching the standards and distractions that kids in Mill Valley don't have to deal with."

Bonner's sister, LaTanya Wiggins, a district parent as well as an administrative assistant at the district's Willow Creek charter school, said she believes teachers "are burned out, out of options, out of suggestions."

Ruby Wilson, who is retiring this year as principal of Bayside and Martin Luther King schools after 34 years with the district, said it doesn't help that a quarter of the district's students enroll and leave the schools each year, a problem that has plagued the district for decades.

Also, parents rarely attend school meetings, with the exception of parent-teacher conferences, and some parents need to take a more active role in helping their children with homework, she said.

Wilson said that for many students who come from low-income families with little exposure to different cultures, going from home to school "is almost like you're shifting from one language to another."

The reason for that is as much cultural as economic, said Ricardo Moncrief, chairman of ISOJI, an advocacy group for low-income residents in Marin City.

"A lot of parents are under heavy-duty stress, they are working two jobs, they are having to live as dependents of social service providers because of the lack of community jobs," he said.

Yet the school board, he said, sometimes "comes across as very arrogant."

"They lack an empathy of what it means to grow up poor. They don't know what it is to have grown up on the street and deal with a world that is kicking your butt all the time."

Studies of the district dating back more than four decades describe an "alienation" between the school district and the community, as it was put in 1963 by the state Department of Education. The problem was reiterated in 1974 and 1997 audits.

It is criticism that today baffles trustees, who insist they continually reach out to parents and others in attempts, for example, to increase parental involvement.

Parents, however, point to the board's decision in November to bring in drug-sniffing dogs to inspect the middle school, which they insist they heard nothing about for more than two months. After a public outcry this spring, the board reversed its decision.

"They are taking the previous stance as previous boards have done," said Wiggins, which she described as ignoring the people who elected them.


Throwing money at it

Because of its preponderance of low-income students who bring in more federal funding, and because it is largely funded by "basic aid" - plentiful local property taxes in a pricey real estate market - Sausalito Marin City is the top-funded urban school district in California, and among the top 2 percent nationwide.
The district:

- Spends $22,232 per student, compared with a statewide average of $7,127 per student in 2004-05, according to the state Department of Education.

- Pays teachers an average annual salary of $70,981, the highest in Marin, where teachers averaged $58,256 for 2004-05, the last year for which complete figures were available. Five long-time teachers in Sausalito Marin City earn $81,695 a year.

- Spent $849,425 last year on administration, including administrators' salaries, out of its $4.6 million budget. Among the state's 27 smallest, wealthiest school districts, Sausalito Marin City ranked among the top three in the cost of administration; it devoted 18 percent of its budget to administration, compared with an average of 4 percent for elementary school districts statewide.

"Clearly, the district has become a small-scale yet bloated organization," said Bruce Fuller, a professor of education and public policy at the University of California at Berkeley. "Per-student spending on administration exceeds the total budget that many districts have to put into their total program."

The district can afford several staff consultants and has its own public relations specialist.

But the high per-pupil expenditure demonstrates what many experts have maintained for years: money is but one factor in providing an effective education for students.

Other factors - high expectations of students, highly motivated and committed teachers, parental involvement, the income level of parents - are keys to student success.

Hoyt noted that despite the district's wealth "we are the lowest-performing school district in the county."

"We do have a lot of money and yet, the vast majority of our kids are reading below grade level. We have to do something about that because if we don't, they won't make it at Tam High School. If they can't read, they can't compete."

Fuller put it this way:

"The sad story of the Sausalito Marin City district is one that we keep repeating over and over again, which is that money alone doesn't guarantee higher student achievement. And the problems in Marin City are more deeply seated in the racial isolation of that community, even as it sits on the edge of one of the wealthiest towns in the world."


Working toward change

Trustees contend that progress is afoot and the district soon will excel. Stratigos is fond of saying it will become "the best district in the county."
"We're on the brink of success," he said, pointing to higher test scores and the appointment of new Superintendent Debra Bradley who, he said, will help assure more teacher accountability and a curriculum more focused on academic success.

The board last year ousted Rose Marie Roberson as superintendent because, Stratigos said, it wanted someone who could better lead the district to higher academic achievement. Roberson declined to comment.

Stung by the fact that more than half the students who move on to high school drop out before graduation, the district has begun working with the Tamalpais High School District.

"Students from Marin City need help," said D'George Hines, a sophomore at Tamalpais High School who recently was elected junior class president. "We need all the help we can get."

Hines, 15, should know. He earned good grades in Sausalito Marin City schools but struggled during his freshman year at Tam.

"I was flunking at school and my mother was a wreck," said Hines, a gospel singer and actor who aspires to be a lawyer, perhaps with a career in politics.

His mother took away his cell phone and other privileges. He went to summer school, met with his teachers, asked for help. This year there are no failing grades; his marks are inching up.

He said he and nearly all of his peers struggled last year as freshmen at Tam.

"I guess it's because of the (Sausalito Marin City) school district," he said. "I wasn't taught in-depth on certain things. É All the academic courses could have been done better."

Stratigos said teacher accountability is on the front burner.

The district this year began a formal program to train teachers how to handle student discipline. As part of that effort, the board earlier this year cut four teaching assistants at Bayside, an effort to shift more responsibility for discipline and instruction to teachers, Stratigos said.

Although Wilson lamented the cuts, Stratigos said the district needs teachers who are "not dependent on aides in the classroom. É We need to put teachers in charge of the classroom."


Vision 900
Trustees hope slogans will help in their quest for improvement.

"Vision 900" tumbles into conversations with trustees early and often and refers to a 900 Academic Performance Index score, obtained by only a handful of the best Marin and state districts.

The district this year earned an API of 692, the lowest of Marin's traditional school districts, but higher than just three years ago when the scores were in the 300 range.

California's goal for public schools is a score of 800 or higher, which is based on a scale of 200 to 1,000. In 2005, MLK was among six of 73 public schools in Marin that failed to meet the state's standard for annual academic progress, accountability standards required under the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

Still, it is the swing from the 300s to the 600s in the API that school officials are pointing to as a sure sign things are improving. State testing experts say it is a mistake to make too much of the jump in scores because the subjects and grades tested have changed from year to year, making comparisons impossible.

Another slogan, "94965," was originated by the district's public relations specialist, and refers to the ZIP code of both Sausalito and Marin City. Its message is one of inclusiveness: a school district that comprises not only black children from Marin City but also white children from Sausalito - a goal that will

Students stretch during morning assembly at Bayside School in Sausalito. The Sausalito Marin City School District is Marin's most diverse. (IJ photo/ Frankie Frost)

be attained through the accomplishment of "Vision 900."

Stratigos and trustee Tom Clark believe that outstanding test scores will re-attract the white majority to the district, and thus create schools that are racially balanced and socially and economically diverse, a perfect reflection of the community they serve.

The district also is targeting its buildings - a $15.9 million bond measure approved by voters in 2004 will help pay for renovation of Bayside in Sausalito and a new MLK school in Marin City, with construction to start this fall.

Stratigos envisions a school modeled after a high school, with different classes for different subjects, high expectations of excellence and no excuses for failure - a highly successful academic institution that sends students on to high school fully prepared and ready for success.


Breakfast and poetry

Meanwhile, as the adults plot and plan, the kids at Bayside Elementary go to school day after day wearing infectious smiles and embraced by an aura of contagious hope like small children everywhere.

Each day starts with breakfast in the multipurpose room.
They giggle and tease and chat for awhile and then it is quickly down to business, which on one recent day was the recitation of poems led by Wilson, the principal.

The first was by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and the children, 50 or so, recited it perfectly and with gusto. Then there was a poem by Langston Hughes; the children again were flawless in their delivery.

"Splendid, splendid, very good - very good," Wilson said, "though you raced through one and it was a little faster than I wanted."

Somewhere, the experts say, there is a disconnect between most children's obvious willingness and ability to learn and to please - as demonstrated by the poetry lesson - and the acquisition of basic academic skills for many minority youngsters from low-income families.

The challenge in Sausalito Marin City schools, all concerned agree, is finding where that disconnect is and making it go away.

Contact Don Speich via e-mail at dspeich@marinij

Schools trustee: 'Good morning' from Greece - Marin IJ - June 2, 2006 - By Don Speich

Schools trustee: 'Good morning' from Greece
Marin IJ Front Page June 2, 2006 By Don Speich

Live from Aegina, Greece, it was Sausalito's George Stratigos - participating Thursday in a meeting of the Sausalito Marin City School District Board of Trustees.
"Good morning," said board president Stratigos on the phone about 20 miles southwest of Athens on the Greek island in the middle of the Saronic Gulf.

Bringing the meeting to order, trustee Vice President Whitney Hoyt said, "I will be running the meeting because George left his gavel at home."

It was 5:20 p.m. as she banged the gavel. In Aegina, where Stratigos has a family home, it was 3:20 a.m. He was alone in a pharmacy near his home where he was set up with a telephone

George Stratigos, Sausalito Marin City School District board president, called in to Thursday night's board meeting from a pharmacy in Greece. (Provided by George Stratigos)

and a computer and a chair pulled up next to him.

On the door of the pharmacy was an agenda that had been stuck there by Stratigos.

"I will post the agenda at the street and on the door 24-hours in advance of the meeting (as required by California law) and the door will be open during the meeting to accept interested members of the public," Stratigos e-mailed district staff on Wednesday.

"I will also have a chair so that persons in the room can listen to the meeting. I think this meets all the legal requirement for me to be in attendance at the board meeting. Please advise if there are any other requirements. Thanks."

That the 24-hour notice was required in Greece seems unlikely, but no matter, the intent of the state law was being honored thousands of miles, multiple time zones and numerous countries away in the birthplace, after all, of democracy.

Talking through a Star Trek-looking contraption at the end of the board table at district headquarters in Sausalito, Stratigos sounded wide awake on the island of 6,500 residents and bleached-white buildings and all-night bars and the former part-time home of Nikos Kanzantzakis, who authored "Zorba the Greek."

But his tone was sheer disappointment when he referred to the chair next to him.

"No one has shown up yet,"
said Stratigos, who paid for the phone call.

And perhaps just as well, for what soon was to transpire was a meeting filled with audio-visual aids - not at all phone friendly - and distressing news - not at all conducive to the light-heartedness that might have been expected during this democracy-to-democracy experience.

The bad news was that the district was told by engineering consultants that the land that had been earmarked for the Martin Luther King Jr. Academy middle school was on a foundation of unstable bay mud, which trustees already knew. What they didn't know is that it would cost the district more than $1 million than it had to stabilize the state-of-the-art school that was planned for construction in the fall in Marin City.

One of the consultants, Lee Pollard, distributed some charts and tables to board members and then placed one next to the Star Trek speakerphone.

"I'm going to leave this here for George," he said.

Stratigos and the other trustees, clearly distressed by the news, directed the consultants to go back to the drawing board and see what they could do to reduce costs.

As the board adjourned to a closed session in another room it was decided after some discussion that the cord on the speaker contraption was long enough to bring Stratigos along.

It was 5:30 a.m. in Aegina.

"I'm going to get a doughnut," said Stratigos.

Contact Don Speich via e-mail at dspeich@marinij.com

Sausalito Marin City schools Superintendent Debra Bradley and board members Whitney Hoyt and Thomas Clark attend the school board meeting Thursday, while its president, George Stratigos teleconferences from Aegina, Greece. (Special to the IJ/Kevin Hagen)

George Stratigos, Sausalito Marin City School District board president, called in to Thursday night's board meeting from a pharmacy in Greece. (Provided by George Stratigos)