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Sausalito-Marin City district agrees to desegregate school [Marin IJ]

By Keri Brenner, August 9, 2019 for the Marin I. J.

State Attorney General Xavier Becerra on Friday announced a historic settlement with the Sausalito Marin City School District that will lead to desegregation within five years.

The announcement comes almost nine months after the AG’s office accused the district of deliberately creating a segregated school at Bayside Martin Luther King Jr. Academy in Marin City and violating state anti-discrimination laws. Becerra said the district’s former board of trustees from about 2013 to 2019 deliberately diverted staff and resources to Willow Creek Academy, a charter school under district auspices in majority white Sausalito, while systematically depriving those resources from Bayside MLK, which mostly serves non-white minority student populations.

“Every child — no matter their stripe or stature — deserves equal access to a quality education,” Becerra said at a news conference Friday at Bayside MLK. “That’s what we say and what we believe and what’s required under the law.” It is the first comprehensive effort to desegregate a California school in five decades, Becerra said.

Marin IJ schools document

Ida Green of Marin City, president of the district’s board of trustees, said the history for the segregation goes back decades.

“For more than 70 years, the stigma associated with the Marin City community has been one of failure,” Green said. ‘Whether it’s been failure relative to housing, education, economic disparity, or acceptance in neighboring communities, it’s been an ongoing battle.

“This is not the platform to discuss how we as a people simultaneously change the course of all the injustices,” she added. “But we can plan to move forward with a foundational edict of a public school system to provide excellent education to all students.”

Marin IJ schools tweet

[Please click here to read the full story.]

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  • Marin IJ schools document
  • Marin IJ schools tweet

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