Report Over Funding For Marin County Schools Headed To Attorney General's Desk
MARIN CITY (KPIX 5) -- Accusations are flying in Marin County as some say the school board is favoring one school over another.
"Certainly the report was an attack on all of the board. Certainly four members of the board," Board Member Bill Ziegler said.
An investigation prompted by the Marin County Superintendent found that the board favors the charter school in Sausalito - Willow Creek Academy - at the expense of the predominately African American public school in Marin City - Bayside Martin Luther King Jr. Academy.
Now, that report is headed to the California attorney general's office to get a legal opinion on whether the school board has a conflict of interest. Four members have ties to the charter school.
Ziegler is one of the school's founders.
"Our analysis, and our attorney's analysis shows there's no conflict of interest," Ziegler said.
Ziegler says the claims that money is being diverted to the charter school are also false.
Still, Marin County Superintendent of Schools Mary Jane Burke says the board needs to focus more on the struggling Bayside MLK Jr. Academy, where programs are being slashed and test scores are plummeting.
"There's really a disagreement about where their priority should be," Burke said.
Ziegler and others are up for reelection, and question the timing of the inquiry.
The superintendent says her concerns are not political.
"I think it's incumbent on me as superintendent to get to the bottom of the issues, and one way to do that is to use resources that are available across the state so the attorney general office is one of those resources that we have," Burke said.
The Sausalito-Marin city school board plans to send its own findings to the attorney general's office.
The board says it shows there is no bias and it does not have a conflict of interest.
