Two leaders in educational equity from New York City have joined the advisory group working on a desegregation plan for the Sausalito Marin City School District.
The consultants are Matt Gonzales, director of the Integration and Innovation Initiative at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Education, and Zarith Pineda, founder of the independent organization Territorial Empathy. They met this month with the local advisory group formed to comply with the state attorney general’s settlement order in August to desegregate the district’s TK-8 school, Bayside Martin Luther King Jr. Academy in Marin City, within five years.
“Our interest is really to help create some coherence between the unification work, the comprehensive plan that’s required by the AG’s office, as well as the local control accountability plan,” Gonzales said during a visit in Marin City. “All of these things hopefully will fit and work together.”
The district also oversees a K-8 charter school, Willow Creek Academy in Sausalito, which is intertwined with the desegregation plan and a parallel effort to unify the two schools. It has not been decided whether the unified school would be a traditional public school or a charter school.
“Dr. Gonzales is a leader in desegregation efforts nationwide through his work as part of the National Coalition on School Desegregation as well as his work desegregating schools in New York City,” Sausalito Marin City School District Superintendent Itoco Garcia said in a text message. “Zarith is an expert on urban planning and architecture and offers expertise in the areas of desegregation as it relates to housing, urban planning and school desegregation and has worked with Dr. Gonzales in NYC.”
Garcia said the consultants, who met with local officials from Dec. 18 through 20, are on contract with the district “to provide expert advice to the Desegregation Advisory Group as outlined in the settlement with the Attorney General’s office.”
Other members of the desegregation advisory group are Omowale Satterwhite, former assistant superintendent of the Ravenswood School District in East Palo Alto; John Powell of the University of California, Berkeley, a researcher on inequity and structural racism; Sausalito resident Christina Leimer, a specialist in community data collection; and David Duncan, a postgraduate student at UC Santa Cruz, who is studying the voluntary desegregation that occurred in the Bay Area in the 1960s.
A video of the Dec. 19 advisory group forum where Gonzales and Pineda were introduced is posted at smcsd.org. Community members from both Bayside MLK and Willow Creek attended the town hall.
Garcia said Gonzales, with help from Pineda, is expected to write the comprehensive education plan required by the state settlement order.
The idea is that the plan “will be successful in creating a desegregated school that will attract all families currently residing in the 94965 with students under the age of 8,” Garcia said. The comprehensive education plan also will be written with an eye toward “retaining families and students currently enrolled in at Willow Creek and at Bayside MLK and that will be approved by the monitor and the AG,” Garcia added.
Gonzales, who grew up in Los Angeles, said he was on a flight in August when he happened to read an article about the Marin district’s settlement agreement, announced at a press conference with Attorney General Xavier Becerra on an athletic field at Bayside MLK.
Gonzales contacted Garcia to see if he could offer some assistance.
Pineda, who said she and Gonzales have previously worked together, said she wants their efforts in Sausalito Marin City to go beyond “just moving bodies around.”
“We want this to be as inclusive a plan as possible,” she said while in Marin City. “As you know, it’s not just happening here — it’s happening all over the country.”
Pineda and Gonzales want to “find a place of common ground so the community can operate from a place of putting the kids first,” Pineda said.
“We want to see how to make a lasting impact beyond the AG’s report,” she added. “We want to hear student voices, parent voices.”
A final report from the desegregation advisory group is due in June.
