Sausalito Schools: Money Isn't Enough

SAUSALITO, Calif. — There is agreement on one thing here on the lush seacoast of immaculate Marin, California's richest and perhaps loveliest county:

The local school district is in terrible trouble.

In this region of tall trees and big houses, fancy cars and fair complexions, nearly a third of the students in the district are in special education classes, overall performance is way below state standards and tempers are near the boiling point.

Things are so bad that a grass-roots coalition has formed to recall the entire school board, fire the superintendent and maybe get rid of the teachers too.

So destructive that the school population has dropped by more than a third since 1990, as worried parents in this liberal enclave pull their children out of public institutions--first white families, and now some black families.

So perplexing that the plight of the tiny Sausalito Elementary School District--whose students are 80% African American and largely poor in a county that is 80% white and largely rich--highlights a host of major education issues, many seemingly imponderable:

Just how important are funding and class size? What makes children learn? Does race play a role in how children learn? Can problems of poverty and drug abuse be overcome in the classroom?

Most specifically, why aren't children performing better in a district that wants for nothing money can buy?

Most classes are as small as 15 to 20 students. There is an art and drama teacher, a science specialist, a computer instructor. The district ranks No. 10 in student spending out of nearly 1,000 statewide, shelling out nearly three times the state average per student.

Yet children from second to seventh grades performed below the 40th percentile in language skills and barely crested that mark in reading ability, according to the most recent test scores available from the 1996 Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills. Most go on to high school unprepared.

"It's the biggest mess I've ever seen. It's just getting worse and worse," says Josephine Pearson, who left her teaching job at Sausalito's Bayside/Martin Luther King School in January after nearly seven years of frustration. "It's so sad. All that money and nothing for those kids. . . . I don't know what they're going to do."

Right now, it is a mystery, a conundrum of race, class and money stretching back to World War II. Its impact could be felt far into the future.