Tomales Elementary School needs a full-time principal as quickly as possible to address a growing number of alleged bullying and safety incidents, according to the strong showing of parents and other members of the Shoreline Unified School District community at last week’s board of trustees meeting.
The school’s current part-time principal, Jim Patterson, has said he would only consider staying on for another year if the district hires additional support for his administrative staff. Parents—particularly Latino parents—at the meeting said the leadership gap has contributed to strained relations between parents, teachers and staff, as well as inconsistent disciplinary practices. Undeterred bullying was also passionately spoken about.
“There’s a lot of bullying at school,” said parent Ana Gonzalez. “Because we have a principal who’s there only half of the time, he’s not there to see all of these things.”
Others have expressed that bullying is not as severe as many parents perceive it to be. Mr. Patterson provided a survey to the Light he said was completed by all of the school’s fourth through eighth grade students, which showed that 96 percent “felt safe at school.”
But he also agreed that his part-time presence and the incentivized retirements of several longtime teachers—including resource specialist Sandy Kaplan and music teacher Joe Nokes—last year due to budgetary pressures has made it tough for administrative staff to communicate easily and effectively with parents, teachers and students.
“I honestly believe none of this would have happened if there had been more communication about the principal situation,” said Mr. Patterson, who started teaching at West Marin School in 1970. “It’s an equity issue.”
Interim district superintendent Nancy Neu told meeting attendees that she believes the new superintendent should be in charge of hiring a principal for Tomales Elementary—an opinion also shared by the board’s lone Latino trustee, Avito Miranda. Three days of interviews for five superintendent candidates are scheduled for next month.
Ms. Neu disagreed that the alleged increase in bullying is tied to the lack of a full-time principal. “I don’t think it has anything to do with a part-time principal,” said Ms. Neu, whose contract with the district ends this June. “But I do think that we need to work as a full community to bring everybody in.”
Others said the root problem runs deep. For Marisol Salgado, who ran the school’s Family Center before quitting last year, Tomales Elementary, where over half of the school’s 179 students are Latinos, may suffer from institutionalized racism.
“Why are there so many Hispanic parents coming in to ask for a better administration?” said Ms. Salgado, who told the Light that she quit because she herself felt bullied by other staff. “It’s because it’s their children who are being picked on at school. It’s their children who are having to sit on the bench, not enjoying recess.”
Though concerned, Shoreline officials said they were not aware of any instances of racism at Tomales Elementary or any of the district’s other schools. Nonetheless, they said the district would take action if any racist incidents ever occurred.
“I have never seen anything like that,” said Jill Manning-Sartori, the president of the board of trustees whose daughter has attended Tomales Elementary for 10 years. “I hope it’s just a perception issue, and that’s just something that needs to be addressed. But if it’s a perception, that’s still valid.”
Ms. Manning-Sartori agreed with parents that the school needs a full-time principal. “It’s not a question of ‘if,’” she said. “It’s a question of ‘when.’”