Sausalito Marin City District Agrees To Desegregate School In Settlement With State
SAUSALITO (AP) -- A school district in wealthy Marin County has agreed to desegregate a flailing school that state officials found was intentionally created for low-income minority children.
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said Friday that the Sausalito Marin City School District outside San Francisco must develop a plan, scholarship program and counseling for students of Bayside Martin Luther King Jr. Academy.
He said the K-8 school was created in 2013 for students who live in Marin City, which has a high African American population. Becerra said the school was starved of resources to benefit a charter school with more white students.
"Every child—no matter their stripe or stature—deserves equal access to a quality education. That's what we say, what we believe, and what's required under the law," Attorney General Becerra said in a statement.
"But what we say isn't always what we do. Certainly, it's not what the Sausalito Marin City School District did when it chose to segregate its students. Depriving a child of a fair chance to learn is wicked, it's warped, it's morally bankrupt, and it's corrupt. Your skin color or zip code should not determine winners and losers," the attorney general went on to say.
Sausalito is a wealthy, predominantly white suburb on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Becerra calls it the first comprehensive effort to desegregate a California school in five decades.
© Copyright 2019 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
