History
During much of the district's history, the demographics were evenly split between White students and African-American students. Most of the military families from nearby bases, who were mostly White, sent their children to Sausalito public schools. After the Cold War ended, the United States Department of Defense closed Fort Baker, Fort Berry, and the Presidio of San Francisco. Over 100 students left the school in one period after the military transfers. By then, many families in Sausalito were sending children to private schools instead of public schools. By 1996 80% of the students were African American, and most of the district's students were poor. Despite the district's high student spending and small class sizes, test scores were low.
In 1997 the Marin County Civil Grand Jury published a report indicating that, despite the ample funding, the district had poor performance and violence.
In 2006 Jennifer Gollan and Don Speich of the Marin Independent Journal said "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."
A 2008 followup to the county report indicated improvements and suggested that the Bayside and Martin Luther King schools be returned to K-8 configurations.
In 2011 Rob Rogers of the Marin Independent Journal said that the district continually had, of all of the Marin County school districts, the lowest test scores. The University of Southern California's Rossier School of Education named Willow Creek Academy one of the top charter schools in California.
On Thursday January 21, 2014, the board voted to make the Marin City school a K-8 and to close Bayside, having its buildings be used by the Willow Creek charter school, which will use the Bayside campus to house three additional classrooms. The consolidation of Bayside into MLK will be in effect in the northern hemisphere fall of 2013.
Read more about this topic: Sausalito Marin City School District
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“All history becomes subjective; in other words there is properly no history, only biography.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Books of natural history aim commonly to be hasty schedules, or inventories of God’s property, by some clerk. They do not in the least teach the divine view of nature, but the popular view, or rather the popular method of studying nature, and make haste to conduct the persevering pupil only into that dilemma where the professors always dwell.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It may be well to remember that the highest level of moral aspiration recorded in history was reached by a few ancient Jews—Micah, Isaiah, and the rest—who took no count whatever of what might not happen to them after death. It is not obvious to me why the same point should not by and by be reached by the Gentiles.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)