The Braying Dog

Teachers regularly allow ex-students to attack alumni with slurs and insults

By John Geluardi

The Tamalpais Union High School District is continuing is underhanded tactics in the process to rename Sir Francis Drake High School. The most recent trick they’ve used is sabotaging a survey that sought the opinion of parents in the district.

At an early meeting of the Drake Leadership Council (DLC), an 18-member body consisting of teachers, parents and students, a conscientious student suggested surveying the students to see if there was strong support for the renaming of the school. A perfectly reasonable suggestion. In addition, the student had diligently researched how a survey could be carried out easily, quickly and at little expense.

But to the student’s surprise, at least three teachers on the DLC shut her idea down. “I don’t need to know what a bunch of sentimental conservatives think,” said Drama teacher Jasper Thelin said. Another teacher, Richard Marshall said this is not a democratic process and he had already made his mind up how he would vote and it doesn’t matter what the white students think.

Despite the teachers’ attempt to shutdown the survey, there was enough support on the DLC to seek public opinion in some form. They decided on a limited survey that would be sent out students, parents and teachers.

The limited survey was sent out on Monday, Nov. 16 and the school and Principal Liz Seabury immediately shut the parent survey down.

“I hope the alumni concern for HS 1327/Drake continues past this into what really matter at the school… becoming an antiracist school AND community. We’ll see in time,” Seabury wrote in a response to community member Brad Beedle who is a member of the “No Name Change” alumni group.

The email suggests that Seabury believes the entire Drake community is racist though she offered no explanation for such a hostile and unfair claim. Seabury did not respond to emails asking for clarification.

Putting the kibosh on the survey is the latest trick the Drake administration and the school district has used to power through its agenda and deprive the DLC of relevant information as they wrestle with a serious decision that will have significant consequences on the school’s budget, community trust, good faith support and school programs, many of which are designed to close Drake’s conspicuous achievement gap, which Drake teachers are unable or unwilling to discuss for undisclosed reasons.

The name change process is a case in point. The school administration has unnecessarily divided the community with its lack of transparency, arbitrary actions, spending of thousands of dollars on controversial project that is not even approved and a pattern of intimidation in which community members are regularly subjected to, without basis, vile accusation of racism, white supremacy, and agism which has resulted in students and community members being fearful of district and administration retaliation.

The next meeting of the Drake Leadership Council is this Thursday, Nov. 19 at 4 pm. There will be an opportunity to address the DLC. Please see the Sir Francis Drake High School calendar for details.

School District remains silent about source of hidden expenditures

By John Geluardi

In late July, Tamalpais Union High School District Superintendent Tara Taupier, removed the name Sir Francis Drake from the school along with all other images, artworks and mascots related to Sir Francis Drake.

Taupier made the arbitrary, and possibly illegal, move without proper authority and with virtually no public discussion or analysis of the hefty cost to change the school’s name, which is estimated at $470,000. State law requires that no taxpayer funding be used for school name changes and that the school in question raise the funds through grants or community contributions.

But so far, Principal Liz Seabury and the district have been evasive about where the money will come from and whether the grant money will deprive needier school districts of basic funding needs. In various media interviews, Seabury has described the huge cost as nothing more than a “distraction.”

Despite state restrictions, Drake High School has already spent thousands of taxpayer dollars without any budgetary authority to do so. How much tax funding has been spent is unknown because the district and the Drake administration have been acting in secret. Principal Seabury and District Chief Financial Officer Corbett Elsen, to date, have refused to answer any questions about the expenditures. And the district has presented no plan to refund taxpayers for the secret expenditures to date.  

Best estimates have the preliminary costs for the name change at somewhere between $50,000 and $100,000 including a hefty sum to the law firm Dannis Woliver and Kelley, which has racked up heavy legal fees due to the Tamalpais Union High School District’s allegedly illegal maneuvers, including allegations of teachers calling for vandalism, which was carried out by a parent. The action was possibly sanctioned by Principal Liz Seabury, according to emails obtained through the California Public Records Act.

The school district removed the name prior to obtaining the required authorization from the Drake Leadership Council (DLC), a governing body made up of teachers, community members and students. The district is now retracing its steps by seeking DLC approval to change the school’s name.

However, the school administration has failed thus far to present the 18-member DLC with any financial reports, budget projections or strategies for soliciting large contributions from community members or foundations. According to Drake High School’s bylaws, the DLC must consider financial impacts under the state’s categorical funding laws.

The DLC councilmembers are typically not seasoned politicians or experienced bureaucrats. The only real experience on the DLC is represented by the six teachers and Principal Lez Seabury who already have undue influence over the students and parents on the council who are new to the process.

In addition to withholding financial information, Seabury and the teachers have been very aggressive in refusing requests by student DLC members to conduct any polls that might indicate whether students or community members support the name change.

 “We don’t care what the students think,” said DLC teacher Richard Marshall on the record at a DLC meeting on Oct. 1. “This is not a democratic process. We don’t care what the students or community members think.”

Drake teachers claim the name change is vitally important because Sir Francis Drake was minimally involved in the slave trade in the 16th century when he was a very young man. At 23, Drake renounced the slave trade, became vociferous advocate against the practice and freed more slaves then he had ever transported on his two slaving voyages.

The Drake debate is no doubt valuable to engage in particularly because Marin is more than 70 percent white and the teaching staff at Drake is conspicuously white without exception.

But beyond the leafy boundaries of Marin County, the debate about school names becomes something of an absurdity. Cities like Oakland, Richmond and San Francisco where school districts are struggling to maintain classes, programs and feeding thousands of students and their families, during coronavirus budget cuts, such divisive fight over a name must seem solipsistic and self-important, particularly given Drake administrators are secretly spending huge sums of money, possibly illegally, to change the name.

Calling the name change efforts “offensive,” San Francisco Mayor London Breed chastised the San Francisco Unified School District for pursuing abstract name changes while neglecting the education of students of color who are losing critical ground.

“The achievement gap is widening as our public school kids are falling further behind every single day,” Breed wrote in her October 16 statement. “And now, in the midst of this once in a century challenge, to hear that the District is focusing energy and resources on renaming schools – schools that they haven’t even reopened – is offensive.”

According to the 2019 California Assessment of Student Progress test taken by 95 percent 11^th graders in the Tamalpais Union High School District, Drake teachers failed African American and Hispanic students by yet again making no appreciable difference in the achievement gap.  

 The DLC’s next scheduled meeting is at 4 p.m. on October 29. Zoom information and links can be found on the Sir Francis Drake High School website.

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By John Geluardi

Corrected version:

Community members are alleging the Sir Francis Drake Site Council, which will decide whether to change the school’s name is stacked with activist teachers whose votes in favor of the name change are a foregone conclusion.

And according to school emails obtained through the California Public Records Act, it looks like the community members may have a point.  

There are six teachers on the 18-member council and all six have written emails over the summer that show they strongly support the name change and some put a premium on activism. Several of the site council teachers called for vandalizing the school as a form of political action.  Other site council members include five students, four parents, two school employees and Principal Liz Seabury.

In addition to teachers who are expected to vote for the name change, there is one teacher, Jasper Thelin, who is serving his second term on the council. Teacher terms on the council are only for one year and it is unclear if Thelin was elected for 2020-2021 term or if he was appointed. The school has posted no election results for any of the teacher councilmembers and Seabury has not immediately answer questions about Thelin’s current term.

Thelin stated at the first site council meeting that he doesn’t care what the community thinks about the name change and those who are against it, are sentimental “conservatives.”. “I don’t need any more information,” Thelin said at the council’s first meeting. “I’ve already made up my mind.

The 18-member Site Council is charged with choosing a new name, hearing public input, deciding the process by which the school’s name will be changed and even if the name will be changed at all. The Council held a second meeting on Thursday, Oct. 1.

The school administration’s name change process has been fraught with irregularities and possible illegal activity including an alleged violation of the Brown Act. Many of the blunders and deceptive acts appear to have been caused by the district’s headlong rush to get the school name changed before the election on November 3, when Measure M, a special tax for educational purposes, will be considered. Board Trustee Cynthia Roenisch pressed the school administrators to act quickly to avoid community opposition. She lobbied heavily for a quick resolution and warned of the community getting organized to oppose the name change. “We have a parcel tax election in November, and some may create more friction if date is too far in future,” Roenisch wrote in a July 2 email. “…but we know Dixie was shit show and some of it was from lack of vision/tight timeline from the start.”

The three teachers who called for defacing the school are (click on links for emails) Site councilman Dan Freeman, who was one of the chief organizers behind the name change. He suggested defacing the school in the manner of “statue toppling.”

Site councilman Richard Marshall who used tortured logic to support his calls for defacing the school, which he said could “show respect” to students who do not want the name change, according to a July 17 email.

And site councilwoman Kendall Galli wrote an enthusiastic July 15 email. “Let’s tarp the ship with a camel colored tarp… and tarp or paint the back of the dugout, Galli wrote. “Let’s get the kids in NOW on the ground floor. “This is ACTION… and student lead.”

If the school hadn’t actually been vandalized, the teachers’ emails could be written off as the over-excitement of teachers bored during summer vacation. But some of the things described in the emails did happen on July 27. The name and ship on a stucco sign in the parking lot was papered over and an image of the school mascot was painted over.

Seabury insisted at the most recent site council meeting that Drake teachers are largely in favor of the name change and that the teacher site councilmembers were all fairly elected. However the election results are not posted on the Drake Site Council’s webpage.

As yet, there is no evidence that any of the teachers were involved in the vandalism, but there was an email from a witness informing Principle Liz Seabury that a parent was part of the defacing crew. Seabury has refused to divulge the parent’s name.

The next meeting of the site council is on Oct. 15. Information about the site council can be found at https://www.tamdistrict.org/domain/317.

Contribute to the continued coverage of the Drake Name Change.

By John Geluardi

When California voters approved the legalization of marijuana last year, they did so, in part, because of a promise. A promise made by advocates of Proposition 64 who claimed black market weed farming would come to an end, the environment would be protected, weed would be wholesomely grown, and all harvests would be tested to assure the safest possible product is sold in a new and thriving marketplace.

That promise was present in the text of Prop. 64: “By legalizing marijuana, the Adult Use of Marijuana Act will incapacitate the black market and move marijuana purchases into a legal structure.” But the ballot measure failed to mention exactly how the black market would be “incapacitated.” Nonetheless, many supporters chose to believe that legalization would shutter dangerous illegal indoor grows in residential neighborhoods and sprawling warehouses and outdoor grows in scenic parklands.

Voters also wanted to think the organized crime operatives who watch over those massive outdoor grows would take their automatic weapons, banned pesticides, and poor hygiene to other environs in other states.  And there’s a lot at stake. Control of the darker forces of black-market farming practices is critical to protecting parks, water resources, and aquatic life. The National Forest Foundation estimates that each year huge amounts of harmful chemicals are dumped in state forests, including 9,000 pounds of rodenticide, 70,200 pounds of fertilizer, 4,800 gallons of insecticide, and 300 tons of assorted garbage.

But since voters approved Prop. 64 a year ago, state bureaucrats, eagerly anticipating high tax revenue from the estimated $13 billion industry, have been softening their position on the black market, perhaps in an effort to dial back expectations. “It’s going to take some time,” admitted Lori Ajax, chief of the state’s Bureau of Cannabis Control, told the Los Angeles Times. “While it’s unlikely that everyone will come into the regulated market on Day One, we plan to continue working with stakeholders as we move forward to increase participation over time.”

But how realistic is it that state and local government agencies will bring illegal pot farms into the regulated market? Legalization becomes the law of the land in January, but it’s already clear that the onerous criteria for state and local compliance and the punishing fees for applications, inspections, and property upgrades are serving as a huge obstacle for farmers who want to abandon the black market and trade in the regulated one. And state officials have yet to figure out how to effectively lock California black-market pot farmers out of the new legal marketplace.

In fact, there’s little doubt that California’s illegal pot growers will continue to thrive within the state even if they are locked out of the new, regulated marketplace. There are already well-established trading routes to other states and countries. California growers harvest 13.5 million pounds annually (a low estimate), but the state only consumes roughly 2.5 million pounds, according to the state Department of Food and Agriculture. That means cannabis farmers ship roughly 11 million pounds out of state every year. The California Bureau of Cannabis Control is still in the process of fashioning new regulations that will undoubtedly prohibit the transportation of weed across state lines, but it’s unclear if the bureau’s inspectors will be able to crimp the flow of black market pot that has been crossing state borders for decades.

In the 44 years since the Drug Enforcement Administration was formed, well-funded government agencies, often working in tandem with U.S. military forces, barely put a dent in California’s illegal pot farming industry. According to the DEA, an intense effort of combined local, state, and federal forces was only able to eradicate 2.6 million pounds in 2015. Creating a new layer of confusion, California’s local governments are now creating a crazy quilt of opposing regulations.

In San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, and Richmond, pot farming mostly takes place indoors. Thousands of homes and warehouses have been converted into discrete farming operations, many with jury-rigged electrical systems that are prone to fires related to overloaded circuits. In Richmond, which has regulations in place for permitting indoor legal pot cultivation, there hasn’t been a strong-armed effort to shutdown illegal grows. In one case, an indoor pot farmer was growing in a 70,000-square-foot warehouse, and instead of shutting down the grow and ripping out the plants, the city decided to help the owner make the operation a revenue generating business. “The owner of the operation didn’t have a criminal record and was willing to work with the city,” said Planning Director Richard Mitchell. “He paid all the application fees, and he’s now making needed upgrades to the building to comply with city cannabis and zoning ordinances.”

This tactic is also being used in Humboldt County, where there is a serious problem with pot-farm-related environmental damage to soil, waterways, and aquatic life. The county planning department has sent out letters to known outdoor pot farmers telling them to get on the waiting list for county permits and cease environmentally damaging practices. If growers honor those requests, they can continue to operate on a temporary permit. If they don’t, they will face a $10,000 fine for each day they continue to grow weed. “People who are in the permit process are not targets,” said county Planning Director John Ford, adding that the county’s primary goal is to put a halt to illegal farms that are causing environmental damage. “My primary hope is that we get sites into compliance.”

Hezekiah Allen, director of the California Growers Association, said Humboldt County’s approach will likely become a model for counties that want to responsibly regulate cannabis cultivation. “It’s a popular model with the California Association of Counties growers in Humboldt who are telling me that it’s workable,” Allen said. “It’s a shift to tax liens and civil actions and away from uniformed officers breaking down doors and chopping down plants.”

California’s new marijuana market is full of promise. It will create thousands of jobs and as much as $1 billion will flow annually to state coffers. But despite the best efforts of bureaucrats and law enforcement, it doesn’t appear that the outlaw pot farmer will be riding off into any sunsets.

By John Geluardi 

Grower Joseph Snow practices clean growing method based on the philosophy of rebel Japanese farmer  

As California’s newly legalized cannabis market gears up for its January launch, pot farmers are looking for ways to meet new safety standards for their harvests. And in the rush to employ safe farming practices that result in high-quality yields, one California grower has adapted the farming philosophy of Masanobu Fukuoka, an iconoclastic Japanese farmer who bucked the chemical-based farming practices of the early 20th century, and has been producing top-quality cannabis that requires no pesticides, fungicides, or chemical fertilizers and naturally repels molds and insects.

Joseph Snow, who grows at an undisclosed Bay Area location, is still in the experimental phase but has nonetheless been growing small, indoor crops of cannabis that have been passing laboratory tests with no sign of pesticides and impressively low levels of molds and fungi. Moreover, Snow’s grows have been producing average-size yields of highly potent cannabis.

During a chat last week, the 28-year-old Snow folded his 6-foot-5-inch frame into a chair at Au Coquelet Cafe & Restaurant in Berkeley. He was born in New York but was mostly raised and educated in Israel. And when he talks about the principles of growing cannabis, he becomes quite passionate. “I’m not in this for a hippie-dippy notion of growing organic plants,” said Snow. “That is the goal, of course, but I’m really in it for the science.”

Earlier this month, the California Bureau of Cannabis Control released a nearly 500-page tome of proposed regulations that will set standards for everything from licensing for growers and dispensaries to acceptable noise levels for outdoor growing activities. Under this extensive oversight, each individual cannabis plant will be “tracked and traced” from “seed to sale” with particular attention paid to the presence of contamination levels on plants bound for the marketplace. Using sophisticated testing methods, state-certified laboratories will test cannabis products to ensure they meet minimum levels of pesticides, solvents, fungus, and mold.

This testing took on some urgency recently after Anresco Laboratories conducted tests on all of the cannabis featured at the HempCon Festival held in San Francisco in August. The San Francisco-based laboratory discovered that 80 percent of the cannabis at the festival was contaminated with unhealthy levels of solvents, pesticides, molds, fungus, or various bacteria.

In addition, research data compiled by Integral Ecology Research Center show that Humboldt, Mendocino, and Kern counties have elevated levels of chemicals often used in banned pesticides. Chemicals such as carbofuran, diazinon, and zinc phosphide, all of which are dangerous to human health, have been found in creeks and rivers that feed into sources of drinking water. Perhaps most alarming, earlier this year a California man undergoing cancer treatment at UC Davis died from a lung infection that doctors believe was caused my ingesting marijuana tainted with fungus.

Kyle Borland, a cannabis spokesperson with Anresco Laboratories, said they applied the state of Oregon’s official standards when testing the HempCon cannabis. “Admittedly, the man who died had a weak immune system from his cancer treatment, but we took a strict approach to testing the HempCon cannabis, because we want to be assured that medically compromised users will not be at risk,” Borland said. “We ran tests on the HempCon cannabis twice, and the vast majority of it would not have been allowed into the Oregon marketplace.”

Snow is one of many California growers who is applying reliable methods to grow top-quality cannabis that’s safe for the newly legal marketplace. But Snow’s methodology is largely unknown in the state. And despite facing a host of doubters, he’s had a great deal of success and has a stack of test results from Pure Analytics Laboratory in Santa Rosa that shows he’s on the right track. Snow said his techniques can be easily adopted by growers who want to produce cannabis that is essentially organic: free from chemical contaminants. “That’s really the goal,” Snow said. “Growing outdoors will produce even better and safer product.”

Snow based his growing theory on Masanobu’s book, One-Straw Revolution, which has inspired a natural-farming philosophy internationally. Masanobu’s theories have been successfully applied to growing fruits and vegetables, but they have not been widely applied to cannabis cultivation. “There is very little information about Masanobu’s theories in relation to cannabis growth,” Snow said. “That’s why this method is so revolutionary.”

The principles are basic: a good environment in terms of healthy, chemical-free soil is required, good lighting (outdoors is best), moderate temperature control, and lots of worms. “A good combination of red worms and European night crawlers in the mulch seems to work best,” said Snow, adding that his mulch is simple as well: rice straw and untreated plant material from previous grows.

“Hard work and careful attention to the plants is mandatory, but if those simple things are provided for the plant, it will naturally produce healthy amounts of resin and terpenes, which effectively protect the plant from mold and fungi,” Snow said. “It’s the growers who neglect their plants that find themselves in trouble that have to spray their crops with dangerous amounts of chemical herbicides and pesticides.“

Snow’s methodology sounds very similar to biodynamics, an organic method that dates back to the 1920s. Snow said his theory, which he calls “Natural Farming,” is within the rubric of biodynamics, except his practices are greatly simplified. For example, Snow does not compost his soil or use any nutrients as some biodynamic methods call for. And Snow avoids any practices that call for celestial calendars or moon charts, which are common in biodynamics. “I pare down everything to its most simple,” Snow said. “I want to remove anything that is unnecessary and still grow top-quality crops.”

Reggi Gaudino, vice president of scientific operations at Steep Hill Labs in Berkeley, said good test results for chemicals and mold are not unusual with small grows, but with larger grows, it’s much tougher to achieve good outcomes. “Once you scale up, it becomes harder to avoid microbe contamination,” Gaudino said.

Snow agreed that larger grows require more work but said it is possible to grow high-quality plants with virtually no pesticides or other chemicals provided the grower does not get greedy and hires the people needed to properly care for the plants and their environment.

“There have been a lot of people who doubt the methodology I’m using, but they produce excellent results, and I’m happy to show it to anyone whose interested,” Snow said.

Snow said he is unsure when he will move his farm outdoors, though he’s looking forward to growing with sunlight. “It will take longer to harvest, but the best place to grow is the most natural place and that means outside.”