Tag Archives: Jill Tucker

SF Gate: Tiny Marin County district clings to struggling school

April 9, 2014 ymartinez

Photo: Paul Chinn

Despite the state’s economic recovery, a Marin County school district is struggling to make ends meet and is planning to cut teachers, administrators and special programs in the coming months.

While unusual, that wouldn’t normally be noteworthy save for one not-so-minor detail: The Sausalito Marin City School District, thanks to a property tax loophole, has almost $30,000 a year to spend on each of the 150 students at its single school.

That’s triple or quadruple the amount spent by most public schools and several thousand more than elite private schools. It’s also just shy of the cost for a year of college at UC Berkeley, including room and board.

And it’s still not enough to pay the bills – or lure the area’s middle- and upper-class families to send their kids there.

How then does a metropolitan school district with huge piles of cash, along with money woes, mediocre test scores and one under-enrolled school continue to exist?

The situation in Sausalito Marin City exemplifies the staying power of tiny and expensive school districts arguably clinging to community control and historical precedence rather than common sense.

SF Gate: June Jordan School for Equity gets a break on testing

March 5, 2014 ymartinez

Story by Jill Tucker

Photos by Mike Kepka

Normally at this time of year, teachers and administrators at San Francisco’s June Jordan School for Equity would be starting to gear up for the standardized tests given to students early in the spring.

And the educators would be hoping that this time, unlike in years past, the school’s abysmal scores would really go up. But that won’t happen.

This year, the Excelsior neighborhood high school will get a welcome reprieve from the predictable cycle of testing.

It’s a practice year for California schools as the state transitions to a new computerized testing system based on the new Common Core curriculum adopted by most states. While students will take the new tests, the scores won’t count or even be reported to parents or the public.

For June Jordan, it wipes an ugly test-score slate clean and offers a shot at redemption.

District officials had high hopes for June Jordan.

Even Odds: Fighting the odds for Oakland's young black males

September 5, 2013 ymartinez

Story by Jill Tucker

It was the first Monday in May, and Thomas Logwood was heading to class.

There were just six weeks until the end of the school year at Castlemont High inOakland, and every week seemed to bring another milestone for the 17-year-old senior. His last track meet was coming up. In a few days, he’d attend prom.

And there was the moment he’d strived after for four years, the reward for all the work achieving a 3.5 grade point average and a place near the top of his class of 140: graduation.

It had not been easy. Nothing was inEast Oakland. For a young black man like Thomas, just surviving the crime and poverty that permeated his daily life was an achievement.

In this city, boys of his race are more likely to miss school; be suspended; graduate late, if at all; or be incarcerated than their white, Asian or Latino peers.

Since 2002, the number of African American men killed on the streets ofOaklandhas nearly matched the number who graduated from its high schools ready to attend a state university.

Castlemont was no refuge.