The Tamalpais Union High School District has used vandalism, intimidation and secrecy to exert its power on the school community
By John Geluardi
As the renaming of Sir Francis Drake High School progresses a theme has emerged in the actions of the Tamalpais Union High School District… Destruction.
When looked at closely, the school district’s effort to change the 70-year-old high school’s name lacks anything that’s new or constructive in terms of concepts, programs or tangible value to students. The way the school district has only imposed hostility, secrecy and mistrust through a series of destructive tactics that are designed to achieve a goal – the destruction of a historical name.
The district’s theme of destruction made itself known with the sudden removal of the school’s name from the front of the school building on July 29. There was no public discussion, not warning, just the surprise removal, which was designed to catch the Drake community off guard, according to an email sent by School Board Trustee Cynthia Roenisch mailed to Drake administrators in July.
Even Drake employees were caught unaware. In one email to Principal Seabury sent on July 29, a school employee expressed shock and alarm that community members who opposed the name change had no opportunity to speak.
Seabury claimed the name was removed because of threats of vandalism. “I know this is a bit of a fast move,” Seabury wrote and added the removal had been planned in secret for the previous month. “Due to the potential threats of vandalism to the school, we felt we needed to bring it down today.”
But what Seabury failed to mention was that the threat of vandalism was coming from Drake teachers, Kendall Galli, Dan Freeman and Richard Marshall who were advocating for the destruction of school property in a series of emails that included Principal Seabury and her two vice principals.
In fact, according to Seabury, the school was vandalized on the weekend of July 25. Someone had covered the image of Drake’s ship, the Golden Hind that was on a mono totem near the school’s entrance.
The exact extent of the vandalism was unknown because Seabury never reported it to police despite receiving an email on July 29 that identified one of the vandals, a parent who was in regular contact with the teachers who were advocating for the destruction of school property.
The district continued to destroy the trust of the community by hiding the cost of the surreptitious name change. The cost of removing the name, temporarily renaming the school HS # 1327, storage of Drake memorabilia, letterhead, publication, graduation materials and most of all legal fees related to the district’s irregular tactics, all have been kept secret, which violates government transparency laws.
In addition, the district has been very destructive towards the community which has sustained the high school for 70 years. During two of three community “listening sessions,” people who claimed to be recent graduates repeatedly described the comments of community members who opposed renaming the school as “racists,” and “white supremacists.”
Poor grammar, a misunderstanding of history, an overflow of passion and self-satisfied hostility is to be expected to a degree from young people engaging in political activism, but the startling thing in this case was that during the first two meetings Seabury and Vice Principal Chad Stuart sat silently and contentedly while their former and current students mindlessly hurled slurs at alumni.
By the third meeting, Seabury attempted to quell the insults and slurs, but was only marginally successful. The district destroyed community trust further when Vice Principal Chad Stuart manipulated the speaker list by cancelling 50 sign ups in exchange for a majority of speakers who favored the name change. The result of Stuart’s action was a 12 to one ratio of pro-name change comments.
Now the Drake Leadership Council (DLC) is, after the fact, considering whether to approve the name change. But even that process has been broken. The DLC, which is made up roughly of an equal amount of teachers, parents/community members and students, will vote on what is no doubt a foregone conclusion to remove the name.
The teachers have undue influence over the students just by nature of their roles and the parents/community members are neophytes to the ways of council and the nonteachers are being herded into a predetermined decision by being deprived of information.
They are about to make a decision that will cost the school an estimated $430,000 during a time of unknown budget challenges due to Covid-19 and the DLC has been given no specific information about where that money will come from, how it will be solicited and spent. Nor have they been given any information about how much the unapproved renaming has cost thus far.
The district has illegally kept that information secret, but estimates by some school employees, who asked not to be named, estimate the expense so far could easily exceed $50,000 with the greatest percentage spent on attorney fees due to irregularities in the name change process such violations of the Brown Act, non-transparency, Drake faculty encouraging students to commit acts of vandalism and creating an environment in which Drake students are fearful of expressing their opinions for fear of retaliation from their teachers.
Drake teachers claim the name has to be changed for the sake of students of color, but the DLC has not considered the widening gulf in the school’s achievement gap. The DLC has failed to consider any potential options to a half-million-dollar name change that will make the all-white Drake faculty feel good about themselves, but will have no meaningful impact on the widening achievement gap, which the faculty is responsible for.
The school district has used racial intimidation, bullying, false demonization, vandalism, non-transparency and lies to achieve their dubious goals of changing a school name for symbolic purposes that best serve the self-congratulatory needs of the faculty.
The unfortunate thing is that the district did not need to bully a community that fundamentally supports the school. The decision to change the name was decided months ago by the district, which has the votes, the power, the paid hierarchy of lackeys and apparently, according to Seabury, access to large amounts of disposable cash. They could easily have carried out the name change without the unnecessary bullying. But apparently they enjoy imposing their authority and hostility on their own community.
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