Drake Uses Secret Taxpayer Fund for Name Change

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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