Dozens of parents, staff, students and residents in the Sausalito Marin City School District agreed in recent days they will help to write a new, more uplifting chapter of the school community’s history over the next two months.

“We’re right on schedule,” district Superintendent Itoco Garcia told more than 120 people at two public forums earlier this month, referring to a plan for unification of the two schools enrolling 500 students within district boundaries. “We will have a final draft before Christmas vacation that we will be bringing to the Sausalito Marin City board of trustees at their Jan. 9 meeting.”

The ultimate “one school” plan to unify the TK-8 Bayside Martin Luther King Jr. Academy in Marin City and the K-9 Willow Creek Academy in Sausalito will be created in the next eight weeks through a series of work group meetings, town halls, draft reports and discussions. Once the road map is created, it would likely be implemented in about two or three years.

“The biggest thing I learned is that nothing is going to change for at least another year,” said forum attendee Jason Bright of Marin City, whose 7-year-old daughter attends Willow Creek. “Willow Creek is not going away.”

At the meeting, Bright volunteered for the “process” working group, one of about a half-dozen mini task forces that will be convening weekly to address such issues as facilities, fiscal integrity, philanthropy, staffing, students, transportation, culture and climate.

“We, as parents, are wanting more communication,” Bright said. “Everybody’s really busy, and nobody knows what’s exactly going on. People are scared. We’re trying to do what’s best for our children’s education.”

David Finnane, principal of Bayside MLK, said he has signed up for the “curriculum” working group, which has been meeting every Tuesday in October.

“Our work has begun with a strong group of community members and educators involved,” Finnane said in an email. “There are both WCA and BMLK representatives on the committee and the synergy within our committee has been positive and student-centered.”

Finnane said his working group had a “goal of providing the overall unification committee with a vision and key pillars we hope the professional staff will use as a guide when they meet to discuss curriculum implementation for a unified school.”

The upcoming two-month process outlined by Garcia at the forums was the product of eight weeks of work by a task force of the two schools’ unification committees. The task force included Willow Creek board members Jim Henry, Johanna VanderMolen and Alena Maunder, and Sausalito Marin City School District trustees Debra Turner and Caroline Van Alst.

“I’m thrilled that we’re at this point,” Turner said at one of the forums. “I want us to make the best program we can for all of our 500 kids.”

Garcia said he has developed the broad outlines of a plan for the new school based on a recent survey of district families.

“The top four priorities were science, technology, arts and research,” Garcia said. “We’re going to create a star magnet school in those topics for our 500 kids that will be bilingual from kindergarten on up.”

Not yet decided are the key issues of structure, location, financing and legalities. The district in August agreed to desegregate Bayside MLK within five years in order to settle a complaint from the state Attorney General’s Office alleging violations of state anti-discrimination laws. A report to the state is due in February, Garcia said. It will be strongly dependent on whatever plan is approved by the district trustees in January, he said.

As to structure, will the new school be a traditional public school like Bayside MLK or some version of charter school? Willow Creek is a charter authorized by the district and so it receives state public school funding administered through the district. Legal opinions from the two schools are not yet in alignment, so a third, independent legal memo is being sought, according to Garcia.

“(That memo involves) options, configurations and legal considerations — locally funded versus direct funded charter versus traditional public school,” Garcia wrote in an email. “Our district counsel wrote a memo; WCA district counsel doesn’t agree with everything. The third legal opinion is on this issue.”

Bright said location — Marin City versus Sausalito — is another factor he hopes all the work groups, discussions and town halls will help resolve. The key, he said, is more people stepping up to offer feedback, perspective and brainstorming. That could bridge the unofficial Highway 101 boundary that separates Marin City and Sausalito.

“If we could get more people engaged in the next iteration, then maybe people won’t feel bad about sending their kids under the overpass — one direction or the other,” he said.

Information on the schedule, videos of forum and additional information is available at the district website, smcsd.org, under the “unification” tab. Information is also available by emailing unification@smcsd.org.