What a Surprise

A school district in Marin County has been stripping resources from largely black schools to funnel them to a largely white charter school. This is a feature, not a bug

Members of the community and school officials will meet Wednesday evening to discuss a scathing report that found a Marin County school district has been funneling resources to a Sausalito charter school away from a nearby Marin City school that’s attended by a majority of black students, potentially segregating the schools in violation of federal civil rights laws.

The focus of the report, authored and issued this month by the state’s Fiscal Crisis & Management Assistance Team, adds to the problems facing the Sausalito Marin City School District, which boasts one K-8 school — Bayside Martin Luther King Jr. in Marin City — and was recently embarrassed when its superintendent resigned after being indicted in February on a felony charge in San Diego County.

In looking at the relationship between the district’s board and Sausalito’s Willow Creek Academy, an independent charter school attended by a majority of white students, investigators found that leaders of the charter school “exercise significant control” over most of the district’s board members, making for a “clearly biased financial arrangement” that benefits Willow Creek Academy.

Students at the underperforming Bayside MLK, meanwhile, continue to fall behind as money is diverted from the school to pay for the charter school.

One of the hidden appeals of the charter school movement that is its implication that they will resegregate public schools.