Formal Call to Action for Accountability and Corrective Measures by the SMCSD Board of Trustees

Submitted to the Sausalito Marin City School District Board of Trustees and Superintendent on June 11, 2025

Dear Sausalito Marin City School District Board of Trustees,

This letter serves as a formal notice that the Sausalito Marin City School District community is calling for immediate corrective action in response to ongoing governance failures that are jeopardizing the welfare and educational outcomes of our students.

I. Context: Governance Crisis

Four years ago the communities of Sausalito and Marin City came together after years of separation to better serve its children with the promise of a stable and thriving school community. Under the current district leadership, the middle school failed its students so severely that many families left before the board ultimately acted to combine the significantly reduced middle school student population with the elementary school. And, while the elementary school embraced the middle school students, the needs of these students continue to be unmet under the current district leadership structure.

We remind you that as elected officials and stewards of public education in our community, it is your civic responsibility to uphold ethical, legal, and representative accountability by ensuring support for all students and their educational and social-emotional needs. As parents, guardians, and community members, we celebrate our school community's diversity. This ethnic, cultural, and economic diversity calls for a leadership structure that immerses itself in the community in order to better understand its needs. District leadership has failed to fulfill obligations to act in the best interest of all students and we further assert that district leadership has failed to maintain fiscal responsibility through transparency and meaningful engagement of its stakeholders. Most importantly, our unique community calls for the kind of servant leadership necessary to empathically and effectively see and serve the needs of our most vulnerable students. This letter outlines specific and ongoing breaches that call for urgent and decisive action.

II. Findings: Material Failures of District Leadership

1. Failure to Uphold the District’s Core Principles: Students First, Belonging, and Accountability

District leadership has repeatedly and egregiously contradicted its stated core principles. Rather than placing students first, district leadership has proposed to cut vital services while expanding central office roles. Staff morale is in crisis, transparency is nonexistent, and the teacher and certificated staff’s overwhelming Vote of No Confidence has been largely ignored. District leadership structures in place should support students and teachers with regards to decision making, communication, and planning - but instead such structures are nonexistent or deeply broken. This pattern signals not just mismanagement, but a systemic abandonment of accountability.

Students First

• Repeated proposals over the past two years to eliminate student-facing positions, without also including meaningful proposals to cut administrative positions, have directly threatened classroom stability, instructional quality, and critical student support services. This one-sided approach to secure fiscal solvency undermines morale and erodes confidence in district leadership.

Belonging

• 3 educators resigned last year, mid-year due to lack of administrative support leaving the middle school critically understaffed.

• The Principal has resigned. 

• A Staff Wellness Survey from December 2024—concealed until a public records request by a parent—reveals alarmingly low morale. To date, results have not been discussed with staff. Failure to disclose such material findings constitutes a breach of public trust and undermines any claim of inclusive school culture.

• Chronic absenteeism remains at 26%, a direct indicator of school climate and engagement failure.

Accountability

• A formal Vote of No Confidence in the Superintendent, signed by 92% of teachers and certificated staff, was submitted on May 14, 2025. To date, almost 4 weeks later, District Leadership has failed to publicly and directly respond to this vote—an unacceptable lapse in leadership.

• District Leadership remains unaccountable for the systemic issues raised in the vote.

2. Failure to Meet LCAP and Strategic Plan Goals

The district is in clear violation of its own LCAP and Strategic Plan Goals. District Leadership has failed to provide a safe environment, eliminate learning disparities, or retain a stable and supported workforce. These failures disproportionately harm our most vulnerable students and represent a breach of both state obligations and community trust.

Goal 3 Failure: Whole Child – Healthy, Safe, and Supported

• 26% chronic absenteeism. While chronic absenteeism decreased from 32% in 2022–2023 to 26% in 2024–2025, this improvement is overshadowed by the increase from 23% in 2023–2024. This upward trend is unacceptable. As a small community, our district's intimate size and proximity to students' homes set an expectation to outperform statewide averages. Our current trajectory reflects a systemic failure to engage and support our students effectively.

• School facilities are unclean, unsafe, and noncompliant with basic maintenance obligations, this has been coupled with unfulfilled promised commitments to address sanitation and maintenance issues. Under the current district leadership structure, the district has failed in creating a safe environment for students.

• The district is in violation of Assembly Bill 230, failing to provide required menstrual products in all women’s restrooms, gender-neutral restrooms, and at least one men’s restroom serving grades 3–12.

• For most of this academic year students were able to login as a guest from their Chromebooks and/or use separate gmail accounts to freely access harmful content of all kinds. Internet safety is a part of the current district leadership structure. This remains an ongoing concern.

Goal 4 Failure: Elimination of Disproportionalities

• Abrupt Termination of Equity Program: A fully funded and staffed African American Student Success Program—announced by school leadership on December 18, 2024, to provide case management for 25 general education African American students in grades 1–8 performing below the 50th percentile in reading and/or math—was unilaterally discontinued by District Leadership in January without explanation. These actions reflect a failure to implement targeted interventions to reduce disparities and violate the District’s stated commitments to educational equity. 

• Disproportionality and Equity Failures: With reported IEP rates significantly above average, roughly 22% at SMCSD vs. 14% state average, District Leadership has failed to address disproportionality in a meaningful way.

• All of the above also demonstrates failure of the District Strategic Plan Strategy 1

Goal 5 Failure: High-Quality, Stable Staff

• Staff Wellness Survey from December 2024 demonstrates 82% of responders are dissatisfied with district operations.

• SDTA Survey from January 2025, 21 of 23 teachers reported that the Superintendent and Cabinet ignore input on professional development.

• Vote of No Confidence from May 2025 affirms widespread staff discontent and lack of trust.

• All above demonstrate failure of the District Strategic Plan Strategy 2 and Strategy 3

3. Failure to Meet Special Education Obligations and Legal Exposure

Our district appears to have an inordinate number of special education lawsuits. As parents, guardians, and community members we ask the trustees whether you are holding district leadership accountable for these lawsuits? Are you questioning why students and families reach the point where lawsuits are their only recourse? For a small school district, this seems inexcusable. Further, the district's responses to the findings in the Marin County Civil Grand Jury Report from June 6, 2024: Marin County Civil Grand Jury Report, To Learn or Not to Learn: Are Children With Learning Differences Set Up for Success? calls for better methods of communicating information about special education services to all students. By failing to provide required written disclosures and omitting critical information from its website, district leadership potentially disallows parents their rights under federal and state law. This conduct not only undermines trust—it exposes the District to serious legal liability. This is further compounded by reports that IEP-mandated minutes and services are not consistently met - potentially violating federal and state law (IDEA, CA Ed Code). In addition, this is a failure of the District’s Strategic Plan Strategy 1.

• Approximately 22%+ of district students receive special education services—far more than state average, and are not meeting current standards. This does not include district students who are in non-public schools or other public school placements based on their learning needs. 

• What is District Leadership doing to adequately address ongoing serious disproportionately? The California Attorney General impressed upon District Leadership they should not produce systems of segregation discriminatorily separating our special education learners.

• Our district lacks sufficient website information to inform parents and guardians of their rights and does not clearly outline available services for students with learning differences.

• In dismissing the need for website-based information, District Leadership undermines parental rights guaranteed under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) which mandate clear communication of procedural safeguards and available services. Preferring verbal communication channels fails to meet the accessibility and transparency standards.

• Legal Exposure Through Misinformation: District Leadership’s choice to rely on conversations—rather than documented, legally accurate content—creates unnecessary legal risk.
  
  

4. Misallocation of Resources and Fiscal Mismanagement

Despite an extraordinary $12.3M annual budget for only 262 students—approximately $45,000 per student - the district is in a growing financial deficit. This is a result of administrative bloat, inflated administrative salaries, and misrepresented funding designations. This is not just inefficient, it is financially reckless and threatens the district’s ability to serve students equitably and lawfully. While the preservation of essential district services, such as maintenance, is important, the District must not prioritize the protection of non-functional or underperforming administrative services over the retention and support of student-facing staff.

• $1.5M+ deficit this year, with more projected over the next two.

• Prioritization of a bloated central office, allocating $2.3M (17% of the budget) to 13 non-student-facing administrators—more than two to three times the administrative staffing than the average California district.

• Administrative and supervisory salaries are 542% of the state average; professional consulting services exceed the average by 604% Ed Data-District Profile- Sausalito Marin City

• Misrepresentations have been made to the Board and public, such as falsely claiming positions like Director of M&O citing restricted funding to justify positions that are not in fact, fully restricted.

Your continued inaction represents a dereliction of your oversight responsibilities. The material failures of the above District Leadership will result in consequences.

III. Consequences of Failed Corrective Actions

Failure to address and correct the failings outlined above will result in immediate action by the community, including but not limited to initiation of a recall campaign against current members of the SMCSD Board. 

We are prepared to pursue all available legal and procedural remedies to restore effective, accountable leadership to our district.

In order for the board to change course and correct the failings of the district, we are calling for the following immediate actions.

IV. Call to Action

We hereby issue the following formal call to action:

1. Implement a transparent, stakeholder-led process for appointing an interim principal.
   The selection of a school principal must involve meaningful participation by teachers, parents, and community representatives. We call on an immediate formation of a stakeholder committee—composed of members selected by educators and families—to participate in the identification and vetting of a qualified interim principal, pending a long-term leadership solution.

2. On the first day of the academic year 2025-2026 our school must be safe and suitable for our children and meet all state standards pertaining to student health, safety and welfare.

3. Immediately act to put in place supports to help our most vulnerable students. 

4. Do not extend the Superintendent’s contract.
   June 12th, the Board is scheduled to deliberate on a possible contract extension. We call on you to reject any such extension in light of the clear and material breach of trust between the Superintendent and District stakeholders and the continued areas of failure after two years as Superintendent.

This is a formal notice and Call to Action. A casualty of the failed actions is a return to the days when families left, the school was failing, and creates a condition that would be in violation of the Attorney General’s settlement agreement. 

We urge the Board to act promptly and decisively in fulfillment of your statutory obligations and in service of the students, families, and community you are sworn to represent.

Sincerely,

Concerned Parents, Guardians, and Community Members of Dr. MLK Jr. Academy

CC: Marin County Office of Education, John A. Carroll

Deputy Attorney General for the State of California, Garrett Lindsey

Sausalito District Teachers Association

California School Employees Association Chapter 394

Marin Independent Journal