The Shoreline Unified School District is moving forward with its plan to bring the Tomales preschool under its control, despite warnings from business officials that the district rushed into the decision and the program could take money away from serving K-12 students.
Trustees voted in March to take over Shoreline Acres Preschool, based on projections from consultant Jeanna Capito that the program was cost-covered by state scholarships, tuition and donations. The board was excited about the opportunity to offer health benefits to preschool teachers and bus transportation to families, and to better align the preschool with Tomales Elementary School. They also decided to vote next year on whether to have a district preschool on the Inverness campus.
But Kate Lane, an assistant superintendent for the Marin County Office of Education who provides fiscal oversight for Shoreline, painted a different picture at the board’s June 23 meeting. She said Ms. Capito’s budget was overly optimistic, and that the program would extract as much as $215,000 a year from the general fund.
She advised trustees to weigh that possibility against the benefits of taking over Shoreline Acres, which has served around 20 children on the Tomales Elementary campus since 1999.
“I feel like I’ve been a little hoodwinked, frankly,” trustee Heidi Koenig said.
Ms. Lane admonished the district for not understanding the budget and instead relying on outside consultants to make assumptions. She said she heard about the preschool decision through newspaper articles, though she should have done an analysis before the board acted. Logan Martin, the district’s chief business official, said he was not included until five weeks after the proposal.
“Those are all most unusual manners in which a public school would be conducting business and making decisions,” Ms. Lane said.
The push to annex Shoreline Acres was led by former superintendent Bob Raines, who was arrested on June 8 for lewd acts with a child under the age of 14 and placed on leave. His absence at the meeting left no one from the district who could speak with authority on how to proceed.
“I don’t fully understand the budget at this point,” incoming superintendent Adam Jennings said. “I don’t know enough to say, ‘Yes, I know this will be revenue neutral.’ That for me is a concern…Should the funding not come through, then what is going to become unstable? What do we give up? So maybe we don’t do music anymore…Or maybe we get rid of sports… I, at this point, don’t have enough understanding of the budget to say that’s not going to happen.”
Mr. Martin has waffled on his advice to trustees, offering no firm opinion either way. In March, he said it was a good program that could work. Last month, he said he doesn’t include donations in the budget until they are committed, so his numbers show the program would run a deficit.
Preschools are different from grade schools because they use a blend of funding. The California State Preschool Program awards scholarships based on the number of low-income students who can then attend for free. Tuition is paid by the rest of the families, at either part- or full-time rates. Private donations from nonprofits like the Marin Community Foundation and Community Action Marin supplement costs.
The numbers can be crunched in different ways, because they are based on assumptions—which is why Ms. Capito projected a revenue-neutral program and Ms. Lane projected a large shortfall.
Ms. Capito based her projections on an increased tuition, more students attending at a full-day rate and $67,500 in philanthropic funding. Yet Ms. Lane pointed to the Bodega Bay Preschool, which the district operates at a cost of $50,000 a year and climbing. She also cautioned that the Marin Community Foundation has only committed to supporting the Tomales preschool annexation for one year.
To help ease concerns, the West Marin Fund committed $150,000 over the next five years to cover any deficit spending on the preschool by Shoreline. Executive director Sarah Hobson assured trustees that nonprofits are stable and willing to help. They meet regularly to talk about preschool as part of the Marin Promise Partnership.
“It’s easy to be fearful and appropriate to be cautious, but there actually is an incredible opportunity for public school-private philanthropic relationships to be built, when there is such an inspirational goal or outcome of supporting families who really benefit from early childhood education,” Ms. Hobson said.
Preschools are also a top priority for Governor Gavin Newsom, who released a plan last year that calls for an overhaul of the state’s childcare systems over the next decade, including free preschool for all 4-year-olds and low-income 3-year-olds.
Daphne Cummings, the director of the Tomales preschool, said that West Marin should be prepared when additional state money becomes available. Because of staffing shortages, she spends more time in the classroom and less time seeking funding.
Shoreline Acres sees about half of its staff leave each year, fracturing the teacher-student relationship and wasting professional development. Bringing the preschool into Shoreline will provide much-needed stability, Ms. Cummings said.
Budget aside, everyone at the meeting agreed that a district preschool is worth pursuing. Teachers would be offered health benefits through the district, and the connection to kindergarten would be strengthened. Preschool kids could ride the bus, increasing access for more families, and parents would gain experience as their child’s advocate at the district at an early age.
Access to preschool is one of the top predictors of future success, and a lack of preschool disproportionately impacts low-income families and families of color.
Yet the board was split. Ms. Koenig said she was distressed about the budget, and she encouraged the board to wait another year so Mr. Jennings and Mr. Martin could be further included in discussions. New trustee Kylee Lang reiterated her point, wanting more information about how a preschool would impact other school programs.
“Not because we don’t want a preschool. It just does not sound like we are educated enough,” she said.
Jane Healy said she feared a financial catastrophe hitting the district and having no exit strategy. The K-12 program should be protected, she said.
George Flores, a new trustee from Bodega Bay, offered the most impassioned defense of the preschool annexation. “I think we’re making a great decision,” he said. “Stick with the smart vote that we made before, stick with these great people that are staffing our preschools now. If we pull the rug out from under them, we could lose them, and that would be a tremendous loss.”
New trustee Thomas Tyson asked about the impact of walking away from Shoreline Acres. Ms. Cummings said she already relinquished contracts with the state in good faith, and the transition of licensing documents from the nonprofit to the district has begun. Her uncertainty was enough to convince Mr. Tyson to stand by the district’s original decision.
Tim Kehoe agreed with Mr. Flores and Mr. Tyson, but said he wanted to agree to adopt the preschool for only one year. Mr. Jennings said preschool teachers would be hired as district staff, and if the move proves to be a poor financial decision after one year, the district would have to decide how to handle those employees and face losing a preschool in Tomales altogether.
Board president Jill Manning-Sartori was absent. “I was unable to attend the open session of the meeting due to a previously scheduled engagement,” she wrote in an email.
With a 3-3 tie, Ms. Koenig’s motion to rescind the previous vote failed, leaving the district with its previous decision to add the preschool.
Next year, trustees will revisit a plan to open a preschool at the Inverness School in order to equally serve the northern and southern parts of the district, supplementing the Papermill Creek Children’s Corner in Point Reyes Station. Originally, the board was going to vote on a Tomales and Inverness preschool at the same time, but Papermill asked for more time to transition.
In the meantime, Papermill will open its own classroom for 4-year-olds at the district’s Inverness campus on Aug. 2 while exploring how to serve infants and toddlers, director Lourdes Romo said. The school district and Papermill signed a memorandum of understanding this summer.
If Shoreline bails, next year’s arrangement could continue. If Shoreline moves forward, the district would serve 3- and 4-year-olds, and Papermill would serve children from 18 months to 3 years old, with families of 3-year-olds given a choice between the two programs based on their development.
Papermill’s board is also interested in licensing for infants to serve children as young as six months, but that would likely require a different site, Ms. Romo said.
“There is a huge need,” she said. “There’s nothing out there for those families in that age group.”
A trend of dysfunction
Shoreline has struggled with its budget in the past, most notably during a four-year period starting in 2013, when the district ran large deficits. The Marin County Office of Education demanded that Shoreline correct a million-dollar deficit by laying off over a dozen employees, or face a county takeover.
In response, Shoreline restructured its staff and approved an incentives package to encourage older employees to retire. The district went through multiple chief business officials and superintendents in that time.
The budget was balanced by 2017, but the fiscal issues continued under Bob Raines. The district failed to pay teachers their negotiated raises for six months in 2019; it took the teachers’ union two letters and the threat of an unfair labor practice lawsuit to resolve the issues. The district also paid former principal Matt Nagle $700,000 to settle a retaliation and defamation lawsuit. The chief business official position was vacant for two years, until the district hired Logan Martin in 2019.
A regional puzzle
Preschool is challenging school districts up and down the coast. Last week, the Bolinas-Stinson Union School District agreed to hire a second preschool teacher on the advice of outgoing director Victoria Maier, who said the combined duties of pursuing funding, interfacing with parents and supervising students was a tall task. The program will have two teachers and a director next year, costing the district almost $300,000 to serve up to 24 students. Trustee Jennie Pfeiffer proposed sharing a director with Shoreline for one year, but Ms. Maier and other trustees said that was asking for chaos.
The cash-rich Bolinas-Stinson district opened its free preschool for 4-year-olds in 2017 and expanded to serve 3-year-olds last year. The expansion was stymied by the pandemic and will fully take effect next school year, but trustees are worried the board made a hasty decision that did not anticipate the unforeseen costs.
The program is celebrated but has had consequences. The Stinson Beach Montessori Preschool closed shortly after the free preschool opened, and the Bolinas Children’s Center closed when the district expanded last summer, leaving the district as the only option for families in Bolinas and Stinson Beach.
The Nicasio School District considered a preschool for up to eight students in 2019 but tabled it out of funding concerns. The state, the county and nonprofits agreed to contribute $85,000, but the program was still short by $22,000.
A void exists across the board for families with children younger than 3.