When Tony Thurmond agreed months ago to come to Marin, he had no idea that it would be just after a historic desegregation order in the Sausalito Marin City School District and a vote to change the Dixie School District’s racially controversial name. “It was just a coincidence — I was invited to speak on equity,” Thurmond, the state superintendent of schools, said after an hour-long speech Thursday before about 450 people at Terra Linda High School in San Rafael.

Each Marin household is shouldering between $1,000 and $24,000 — or more in overlapping areas — in school district pension debt, according to a new report from Stanford University. The Ross School District, for example, has the highest individual load to carry in Marin schools, with $24,181 in pension debt per household.

A San Anselmo school for behaviorally challenged youth has notched up its expansion game to accept more students in the wake of the abrupt closure of Timothy Murphy School in north San Rafael. Staff at the Irene M. Hunt School in San Anselmo said they are adding two more classrooms this school year to accommodate up to 20 boys displaced by the closure of Timothy Murphy, an independent school that educated primarily foster youth, most of whom live on the same Catholic Charities-owned St.

State Attorney General Xavier Becerra on Friday announced a historic settlement with the Sausalito Marin City School District that will lead to desegregation within five years. The announcement comes almost nine months after the AG’s office accused the district of deliberately creating a segregated school at Bayside Martin Luther King Jr.

More transparency and a possible name change could be on the horizon for the Dixie Education Foundation, the $3.7 million investment fund that acts as a nonprofit corporation to benefit the Miller Creek School District. Miller Creek interim superintendent Becky Rosales said Tuesday that the foundation’s five-member board of directors intends to call a special meeting next month to discuss ways to open up the organization to more public scrutiny.

For the first time in its almost 100-year history, Branson School is appealing to Ross residents to support its growth into another century. The prep school, established in 1920, is asking residents to sign a petition to place a measure on the March 3 municipal ballot seeking voter approval to raise its current 320-student enrollment cap by 100 students over four years.

The current culture’s politics of hate, bigotry, greed and divisiveness might not sound like fertile ground for Buddhist teachings. But, according to a longtime Marin spiritual leader, that is exactly why words of liberation, love and compassion must be heard — now. “A lot of people feel that instead of getting better we’re going backward,” said Lama Palden Drolma, founder and mentor of the Sukhasiddhi Foundation in Fairfax.

Marin residents and school officials expressed shock Sunday following the arrest of Tamalpais High School graduates Gabriel Natale-Hjorth and Finn Elder in connection with the stabbing death of a police officer in Italy. The two men, who graduated from the Mill Valley high school in 2018, were on summer break in Italy from studies at Santa Barbara City College when the incident took place early Friday.

Dominican University of California has long offered coursework in social justice, but now it has a full major in it. The administration said the new major program, which starts in the fall semester, comes as more students are becoming energized about civic engagement — and seeking careers along those lines.

The union leadership’s public consternation about an “intentionally sheltered” fund for the newly renamed Miller Creek Elementary School District in San Rafael is worth noting. But any argument that the Dixie Education Foundation is a secret stash of public funds is weak, considering that its contributions appear on the school board’s agenda and is detailed in the district’s budget.

If Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard are stars in filmmaker Ken Burns’ new eight-part PBS documentary, “Country Music,” then San Quentin State Prison plays a key supporting role. “This place connects two of the central characters — Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard,” said “Country Music” writer and co-producer Dayton Duncan.

Questions still linger over a $3.7 million investment fund called the Dixie Education Foundation, despite a historical and financial summary presented to the Miller Creek School District trustees this week. “I would like to read a copy of the legal opinions,” trustee Marnie Glickman said Tuesday after more than an hour of discussion and testimony on the intricacies of the tax-exempt nonprofit set up in 1995 to support capital projects in what was formerly called the Dixie School District.

A recall effort targeting Marnie Glickman, a trustee in what was up until recently called the Dixie School District, was called off after organizers failed to gather enough signatures. “The committee to recall Dixie School Board Trustee Marnie Glickman announces that it fell just shy of the 2,851 signatures required for the recall election,” said organizer Laurie Pirini in a written statement.

For a correctional facility, San Quentin State Prison singularly — and some would say famously — sits on the bay with a view of Mt. Tam, houses the state’s only condemned population and is California’s oldest prison, established in 1852. It’s also unique in another way. As of this month, the adult school at San Quentin was named the state correctional system’s first “Distinguished School.”.

Teachers and residents of San Rafael’s recently renamed Dixie School District are questioning why no one has ever told them about a $3.73 million “nest egg” stashed away since 1995 to help with the district’s capital projects. “Spending only the annual interest from a $3.5 million dollar nest egg seems like a fiscally prudent move, but by not revealing it for so many years, makes it suspect.”.

The Dixie Education Foundation has no website and no online presence except for a listing in Guidestar, which lists nonprofits, and a required IRS Form 990 tax-exempt reporting document. District resident and former district parent Robert Gehlen, a financial services and investments manager in San Francisco, has been on the foundation board for 15 years.