After being slapped with a scathing report card from state Attorney General Xavier Becerra, the Sausalito Marin City School District has crystal-clear marching orders to end racial segregation of its schools within five years.

The legal agreement between Becerra and the district comes after state prosecutors investigated complaints about institutional segregation in the district.

It is a sad and troubling sight to see a public school district in Marin effectively thwarting anti-segregation laws. In this case, it was the district’s decision to establish two separate campuses serving kindergarten through eighth-grade; one in Sausalito for the district’s Willow Creek Academy charter school and the other in Marin City, the Bayside-Martin Luther King Academy school.

That decision has resulted in a lopsided and untenable balance where Bayside-MLK plays host to a small enrollment of predominantly black and Latino students, while it is dwarfed by the much larger charter school — Willow Creek has 80% of the district’s enrollment.

To its credit, Willow Creek has a diverse student body, but the two-school format has increased segregation at Bayside-MLK.

The state says the district’s own consultant advised the school board in 2011 that the MLK middle school in Marin City was “very segregated” and turning it into a K-8 campus would, in the state’s words, “expand racial segregation.”

The school board, whose membership had a majority connected to Willow Creek, had been warned what would happen and still approved the two-campus configuration in 2013.

The result has been just as the consultant warned.

But the lopsided relationship goes even deeper than size, according to the state’s investigation.

Important academic programs and opportunities such as those available at Willow Creek, were cut from the budget for the Bayside-MLK school. Changes in district faculty standards led to the elimination of Spanish and cuts to MLK’s music, art, physical education and counseling services, according to the state.

For three years, Bayside-MLK students did not have a qualified math teacher, but Willow Creek students had one. The charter school had a full-time counselor, but Bayside-MLK had one only at a limited part-time basis, according to Becerra’s filing.

“Termination of these specialists harmed the academic development of the district’s students,” Becerra concluded in his legal complaint that also outlines the five-year process facing the district.

His summation in his Aug. 9 press conference was even more stinging.

“Depriving a child of a fair chance to learn is wicked, it’s warped, it’s morally bankrupt and it’s corrupt. Your skin color or ZIP code should not determine winners and losers.”

He’s right. He’s also right to take decisive action.

This untenable situation has been allowed to fester for too long.

Marin Superintendent of Schools Mary Jane Burke was right to speak out and get the state involved.

Students at both schools deserve to have equal opportunity. District trustees should not have allowed this disturbing divide to widen and deepen.

Voters, in the two recent school board elections, have already called for change, ending years of the board being dominated by trustees with close ties to Willow Creek. That’s important.

The school board has already started work toward coming up with a new configuration, seeking to bring Willow Creek and Bayside-MLK together into a single school with two campuses.

It is not the time for political or legal defensive measures that essentially preserve the status quo. It is time for constructive action to right a wrong that already hurt the education of too many children and must be corrected, reflecting the community’s insistence.