Sunshine has replaced the coastal morning fog as Principal David Finnane steps out of his office into a bright day at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Academy TK-8 school. The school sits on a hill above Richardson Bay in Sausalito, and visitors are afforded an idyllic view of Tiburon and sailboats dotting the still waters below. A group of children laugh and run on a grassy knoll below the school office, and, beyond that, bulldozers chug away, constructing the foundation for state-of-the-art buildings that in early 2026 will house the new classrooms of Dr. MLK Jr. Academy.
As Principal Finnane describes the progress of the construction project, a girl calls out to him — “Mr. Finnane!” The student and principal chat for a minute, then she walks away to join her class, munching on an apple from one of the many fruit baskets placed strategically around the campus. Finnane says she is a student who was recently moved up a grade level because she needed more intellectual challenge. Despite having a tumultuous family life, she is thriving in school. This girl is exactly the type of at-risk student Finnane hopes the school will serve. “This is so important,” he says. “It is a matter of the trajectory of these students’ whole lives.”
Mid-morning, mid-week, Dr. MLK Jr. Academy buzzes along happily, seeming like the prototypical high-functioning multi-cultural educational institution it aims to be. With small class sizes, an exquisite setting, highly qualified teachers, educational support from multiple nonprofit entities and a diverse student body, this little school serving 270 students, the only elementary and middle school in the Sausalito Marin City School District, strives to be a model of successful desegregation.
In 2019, after an investigation of the district, then California State Attorney General Xavier Becerra announced the first desegregation order in California in 50 years. There were two public schools in the district at the time. The regular public school, Bayside MLK Jr. Academy in Marin City, served almost entirely students of color. The other school, a charter school called Willow Creek Academy, operated on the Nevada Street campus in Sausalito where Dr. MLK Jr. Academy is today. Willow Creek was a fairly diverse charter school, but served almost all the district’s white students. And Willow Creek’s resources and achievement markers were significantly higher than that of Bayside MLK Jr. Academy, a disparity that caught the state attorney general’s attention. “The attorney general said to the school district: You can’t have a school in 94965 that does not look like 94965,” Finnane explains. “Now the school looks absolutely positively like 94965. We are one-third Black, one-third white, one-third Latino and ten percent other races. Our school looks like our community.”
Today Dr. MLK Jr. Academy is perhaps the most socioeconomically, culturally and ethnically diverse campus in the county, and everyone involved — from Superintendent LaResha Huffman to administrators, teachers, parents and educational support staff — seems optimistic about what the future holds. Make that cautiously optimistic. It’s as if everybody in the communities the school serves, especially those from Marin City, are holding their breath… acknowledging the positive direction of the school, but not daring to hope.
To understand this reserve, it is essential to recognize the demographic and historical context of the school district. Sausalito and Marin City are two of the most segregated and economically disparate communities in California, and the school district reflects that. If the word trauma is overused in our modern vernacular, that is not the case when it comes to the Marin City families the Sausalito Marin City School District serves. The students of Marin City have been chronically underserved for decades. On top of that, a previous voluntary desegregation effort in the mid-1960s was an unequivocal mess.
Last November, the district and Dr. MLK Jr. Academy’s parent committee on diversity, equity and inclusion education hosted a community screening of a BBC documentary made about the 1965 attempt at desegregation. In attendance was David Duncan, a Ph.D. candidate in history at UC Santa Cruz who is writing a thesis on California’s historical desegregation efforts. Duncan pointed out that Marin City, home to Marinship Shipyard workers during World War II, was originally a racially integrated community, and the school was one of a few in the nation that was fully desegregated. After the war, while people of other races were able to purchase real estate elsewhere in Marin, redlining and racist real estate covenants prevented Black workers from doing the same, and Marin City became a segregated community. In the 1960s, the kids in Marin City were “forgotten,” said Duncan, and recognizing that “there was something wrong in the district,” progressive parents from Sausalito fueled a voluntary desegregation effort by combining the Sausalito and Marin City schools.
The 1968 BBC documentary, entitled The Mood of America, follows what happened when the district hired Sidney F. Walton, a Black principal who was aligned with the Black Power movement. At the desegregated school, called Richardson Bay School, Walton’s motto was “Education for humanization and social responsibility,” and he educated Black and white children about more than what many white parents were comfortable with. Walton taught students difficult truths, such as the fact that George Washington was a slave owner, and that Black soldiers were not afforded some of the rights in their own country that they fought for overseas.
While, according to the documentary, students of all races responded well to Principal Walton, and Black Marin City families were resoundingly happy with the school, a certain segment of white parents thought Walton was “turning the children into revolutionaries.” By 1968, this group of parents gained control of the school board and fired Walton. Marin City resident and “elder” Royce McLemore, an educator and executive director of the nonprofit Women Helping All People, was a parent of Richardson Bay School students at the time. She was interviewed in the documentary, and was in attendance at the film’s screening in Marin City in November.
“For generations, the Sausalito School District miseducated Black children,” said McLemore. “When Sid Walton became the principal, it was different. Black students were interested in going to school. Students started feeling good about being Black.” McLemore and Bettie Hodges, the executive director of The Hannah Project, a Marin City nonprofit that promotes achievement among low-income Black and brown youth and their families, represent a generation of Marin City community leaders and educators who do not trust the district to do what is best for the Marin City students. “We are having the same conversation now that we had back then. The power dynamic here is the same. The status of Black children and Black families is the same,” said Hodges during a panel discussion after the film. “We just want a good school district for our kids. I’m holding onto a thread of an idea that we can make our public school what it needs to be.”
Superintendent Huffman is one of the people on the other end of that metaphorical thread. Huffman stepped into her role in 2023, replacing Itoco Garcia who was the first superintendent after the desegregation order. As the new superintendent, Huffman found herself running a school district that had only recently transitioned back to in-person schooling after being ordered to desegregate just as COVID-19 struck. She also stepped into the middle of labor negotiations, budget issues, diminished enrollment and an ambient air of mistrust on both sides of the 101 freeway overpass that separates Sausalito and Marin City. Huffman says she avoids the term “white flight” because the indication is that the district will not thrive if white families leave. “In fact, we have lost white families and we have lost Black families. Our middle school, which was previously at the Phillips Street campus in Marin City (and is now at the Nevada Street campus), was at just 70 or 80 students,” she adds.
In 2023 Huffman asked the Sausalito Marin City School Board to make a controversial decision about whether to merge the elementary and middle school campuses by moving the middle school to the Sausalito campus in order to save money. Now, with the merging of the campuses, all TK-8 Marin City students take the school bus to the Nevada Street campus in Sausalito. According to Huffman, this was an unpopular decision, especially for Marin City families whose students and parents were accustomed to walking to and from school. But since the 2024 school year began, she has not personally received complaints about the merger from families or community members, which she sees as “a positive,” adding that despite the tumult and difficult decisions, the district is heading in the right direction. “Change takes time. It just doesn’t happen overnight.”
Both Superintendent Huffman and Principal Finnane speak openly about the fact that the current middle school students, especially the seventh and eighth graders at Dr. MLK Jr. Academy, have not had the consistency or resources that they deserve over the past years, and it shows in their test scores. The 2023–24 CAASPP (California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress) test scores showed an improvement in grades three through five, with sixth grade mixed and seventh and eighth grade declining. “Those 70–80 middle school students had three principals in two years, and a lot of teacher turnover, so the middle school is much rockier and remains a work in progress.” says Finnane. In November, the district allocated $30,000 to hire a specialist to focus specifically on math scores. “It is important to say that while we have created a beautiful, diverse, strong, joyful elementary school, we are in the early stages of doing that for the middle school. We are not seeing the academic achievement we need to see, especially with our Black and brown kids,” says Finnane. “But we have a lot of hope about what the middle school will look like in two years. It will be a different school.”
“Schools mirror problems in society. Schools are not in a vacuum,” says Lisa Raffel, executive director of Bridge the Gap, a nonprofit organization that brings educational, social and emotional resources to underserved students in Marin County. At Dr. MLK Jr. Academy, Bridge the Gap provides both in-school tutoring for under grade-level students and an after-school program for all students.
“These achievement gaps exist across the country — lower resource families find that school is harder,” says Raffel. As someone with a front row seat to the evolution of the desegregated school, Raffel sees in-person school as critical to the development of Dr. MLK Jr.’s culture. “The first couple of years after the desegregation order it was still the pandemic,” she says. “But to build community, you actually have to be together — at potlucks, at awards ceremonies, at soccer games…” One popular program that Bridge the Gap helps fund is SCORES, a no-cost soccer program for the younger grades. Dr. MLK Jr. Academy students practice on Tuesdays after school then play games on Saturdays, bringing students and their families together for a bonding experience outside of school. While the concrete educational pieces are coming into place at Dr. MLK Jr. Academy, it is the intangibles that will create a cohesive culture, the engagement and “buy in” of the extended community that boosts a school to the next level of success. “We need these enrichment opportunities, programs like the SCORES soccer program,” says Raffel. “We need places kids can feel proud, and where families can feel proud.”
For over 30 years Marin City’s Felecia Gaston has been providing exactly that: a place outside of school where children and their parents can feel proud. Gaston founded a nonprofit program called Performing Stars that offers children enrichment opportunities in dance, music, drama, the visual arts and history, as well as providing socioeconomic support and stability — help with food, jobs and housing for local low-income families. As a community elder and an unofficial godmother to generations of children in Marin City, Gaston is highly aware of the barriers to academic success that low-income families face. Performing Stars staff recognize the logistical obstacles for working families — everything from transportation to communication — and Gaston’s organization always takes this into consideration when scheduling events, and always offers a meal to those in attendance. Gaston has also worked with the school district to provide breakfast to each student who takes the bus from Marin City once they arrive at school. When she reflects on the low attendance of Black families at the screening of the BBC documentary on desegregation, which she co-hosted with the district (and made arrangements for a meal to be served), she is not surprised. “It’s not that parents don’t care about being involved at the school, or coming to meetings or events at night,” she says emphatically, “They have to work!”
Dr. MLK Jr. Academy parent Herman Mazariegos has three children in the school, in third, fifth and sixth grade. His children take the bus to school and, according to Mazariegos, “They are doing great and love everything about the school.” As a parent, he sees that his children are thriving and are getting the academic support they need. At the same time, he and his wife are not able to participate in parent activities or committees because of their long work hours.
Kim Robinson also lives in Marin City and has a fourth grader at the school. “My oldest son is 21, so I have been doing this for a long time,” says Robinson. “And I am not going to lie: We have had nothing but good experiences with the school. My daughter loves school, the academics are good and she is outgoing.” Robinson herself went through the Oakland Unified School District before moving to Marin, and has five older children who have gone to public school. “When I have gone in and bumped heads, I get results,” she adds. “So my personal experience is that I have not had issues with the school, and I thank God.” Yet, Robinson does face one significant drawback for her family now that Dr. MLK Jr. Academy is in Sausalito: a lack of transportation that can affect tardiness or attendance. Robinson does not have a car so if her daughter misses the bus, it is too far to walk to school.
Awareness of these obstacles that working families face may hold the key to the success of the school. If parent Kirstin Thomas’s experience teaches us anything, it is that connection is key to that awareness. Thomas, a white parent from Sausalito, enrolled her son at Bayside MLK Jr. Academy in Marin City when he was in kindergarten, before the attorney general’s desegregation order. “It was an amazing environment, and my son and our family were welcomed with open arms,” she says. “But the perception was ‘people from Sausalito don’t really go there.’” Thomas’s older son was one of a small handful of white students attending Bayside MLK Jr. Academy, and is now in fourth grade at Dr. MLK Jr. Academy. Thomas and her husband had no question that their family would stay in the district through the desegregation transition, and they enrolled their second son who is in first grade at the school. Thomas is now on the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee and is grateful that her sons are exposed to teachers and people of color in positions of authority. She says her family has worked to “decentralize whiteness” by doing things like reading books with non-white main characters. “If more privileged parents could understand the history and the cycle we have been in, and we could actively agree to do more to end the cycle, all kids can get a quality education,” said Thomas. “It cannot just be about our own kids getting the best of everything.”
Another Sausalito parent of two, Natasha LaBelle, echoes Thomas in her appreciation of the school, where she says her kids have friends from different backgrounds, who speak different languages at home, are from different cultures and include immigrants from all over the world. “It’s how you talk about diversity and differences at home,” says LaBelle. “I don’t think that if I sent my kids to a private school they would have a better experience, a better education. The rich diversity of backgrounds are invaluable for children.”
Both LaBelle and Thomas describe the growing engagement of the school’s parent community, including the parent and guardian “Dream Team” which sets up events like playdates to welcome new families, parent mixers, outdoor movie night, karaoke, a garden fair and a school float in the Sausalito Fourth of July parade. A Room Parent Network newsletter offers parenting advice on things like sleep and screen time. The school’s Rise Up! 94965 Foundation raises money for enrichment programs beyond standard academics, including music, gardening, art programs and field trips. “I’m very excited about our school. Especially for the students who need and deserve a good education,” says LaBelle. “I truly believe in public schools and I believe every child has a right to equal education. The Sausalito Marin City District deserves an excellent public school.”
When asked about what she sees as the key elements of an “excellent public school,” Superintendent Huffman has a clear vision for what she hopes to see at Dr. MLK Jr. Academy over the next five years: enrollment increases, the school becomes a California Distinguished School, test scores improve, a “culture of inclusivity” means there is no division between Sausalito and Marin City students and parent involvement comes in equal measure from both sides of the overpass.
Back on the Dr. MLK Jr. Academy campus, Principal Finnane continues his campus tour. In Quinn Nguyen’s third grade classroom, the students stand up straight, gaze ahead and proudly sing the weekly assembly song, written by a local musician especially for the school. It is a long song that the students have memorized. “We are responsible, respectful and safe…” the kids croon, showing off for their principal and a classroom visitor. While Finnane’s hopeful outlook is informed by his days on campus with students, watching the progress in the classrooms, the joy and increasing engagement of students, he has also worked in the Sausalito Marin City District long enough to understand ongoing concerns. When asked about the doubting perspective Royce McLemore and Bettie Hodges voiced at the documentary film screening, he is entirely empathetic. “Royce and Bettie’s mistrust is not unfair. Marin County is the most disparately inequitable place in the whole state of California. We need to take a long look in the mirror and ask ourselves, What do we need to adjust? How do we reconnect with families of color? How do we build relationships, and bridge and educate kids with different lived experiences?” he says. “And, what we really need to do now is show, not tell.”
Looking to help the district? The Rise Up! 94965 Foundation is hosting a major fundraiser for Dr. MLK Jr. Academy on Feb. 8 at Sausalito Center for the Arts. The gala, raffle and silent auction will help fund music, art and outdoor education for students beyond what public funding can provide.
Kirsten Jones Neff is a journalist who writes about all things North Bay, with special attention to the environment and the region’s farmers, winemakers and food artisans. She also works and teaches in school gardens. Kirsten’s poetry collection, When The House Is Quiet, was nominated for the Northern California Book Award, and three of her poems received a Pushcart nomination. She lives in Novato with her husband and three children and tries to spend as much time as possible on our local mountains, beaches and waterways. For more on her work visit KirstenJonesNeff.Com.
