Sausalito, Marin City schools vote set
After months of work, Sausalito Marin City School District officials are poised to vote Thursday on a sweeping facilities master plan to modernize the district’s two aging campuses and unify them into one high-performing magnet school.
“This facilities master plan was developed during an unprecedented time in the history of our district, our county, and this country at large,” Superintendent Itoco Garcia said in an email. “We were the recipient of the first desegregation order in the State of California in 50 years, followed by a global pandemic and unprecedented levels of civil unrest regarding issues of social justice and equity.”
Approving the facilities master plan is the next step after the passage on Nov. 3 of Measure P, the district’s $41.6 million bond measure. Voters in the district approved Measure P by a final margin of 73.83% to 26.17%, well above the 55% approval needed to pass. The bond money is intended to go for capital repairs and modernization at campuses in both Sausalito and Marin City.
“We have a historic opportunity to integrate our community and create a new and improved version of education that can unify our schools, our communities — and that can serve as a beacon of light for the rest of the country,” Garcia said. “In order to successfully integrate our school district, close the opportunity gap in early childhood education and attract and retain diverse families and top staff, it is critical that we have world class facilities.”
A vote on the 112-page plan is expected at Thursday’s board of trustees meeting, which convenes online at 5:30 p.m. To attend the meeting, or to see a copy of the facilities master plan, visit boarddocs.com.
Trustee Debra Turner, who declined to seek reelection and whose last meeting is Thursday, gave credit for completion of the master plan to fellow trustees Ida Green and Caroline Van Alst, who served as facility committee members.
Van Alst also will step down after Thursday’s meeting. Newly elected board members Alena Maunder and Lisa Bennett will be sworn in Tuesday.
“Trustees Green and Van Alst, along with our outstanding professional planners and Superintendent Garcia, leave the district well-situated to engage public stakeholders in further visioning and planning for our future campuses, which will serve the unified school,” Turner said. “And a big thank you to voters who supported Measure P, which will enable the district to modernize and upgrade our campuses so that all our scholars enjoy an equitable environment for learning.”
According to Garcia, the facilities master plan was developed “in conjunction with 35 unification meetings, eight study sessions, two surveys, and dozens of members of our community organized into unification work groups in order to heal and repair the legacies that have divided our community,”
The plan outlines three tiers, or phases, of improvements over the next five to 10 years.
The first priority improvements — or tier 1 — are to fix basic structural problems and get all buildings into compliance with code requirements and Americans With Disabilities Act accessibility standards. Those basic upgrades are estimated to cost approximately $900,000.
At the Sausalito campus on Nevada Street — where Willow Creek charter school is located — those tier 1 items include: improvements to driveways, ADA van parking, site paving, handrails, ramps and stairways, ADA drinking fountains and filtered water bottle fillers.
At the Marin City campus on Phillips Drive — where Bayside Martin Luther King Jr. Academy is located — the tier 1 items include ADA drinking fountains and filtered water bottle fillers, and signs in the ADA rooms.
The tier 2 priorities include between 20 and 25 deferred maintenance and capital improvement items. Those range from exterior painting and roofing to heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems. Other items include kitchen equipment, fence, pavement, outdoor furniture and a play structure. The cost for tier 2 is estimated at $4.54 million.
At the Sausalito campus, the specific tier 2 items include classroom modernization, pathways and drop-off modernization, parking lots, Wi-Fi upgrades.
At the Marin City campus, those include the middle school building and modular building modernizations and Wi-Fi upgrades.
For tier 3, there are sitespecific projects and new construction, estimated at a total cost of $30.4 million. Both schools would also add flexible furniture for collaborative classrooms, pod areas and a library.
Specific items at the Sausalito campus include portable building replacement, shade/lunch and play shelters, outdoor classrooms and a school administration building. At the Marin City campus, specific items include portable building replacement, pre-kindergarten classrooms, classroom acoustics, outdoor classrooms and a district administration building.