Latest news with #TamalpaisHighSchool
Yahoo
a day ago
- General
- Yahoo
Outcry as Marin school board ends support services for Black students
The Brief Tamalpais District Board trustees voted 3-2 to end contracts for consultants supporting Black students, despite emotional pleas from parents, students, and staff. Board cited cost and staffing overlap, while supporters argued services have been crucial in addressing racism and building trust. LARKSPUR, Calif. - Emotions ran high on Tuesday night as the Tamalpais Union High School District Board voted to discontinue contracts for two consultants who provided support services for Black students at Tamalpais High School. Parents, students, and teachers packed the room, urging trustees to extend contracts for Tenisha Tate and Paul Austin. The two were brought in to provide mentorship and academic and athletic support following a series of racist incidents at Tamalpais High School, including slurs and graffiti. The services were offered in a designated safe space on campus known as The Hub. "The Hub is more about academics," said London Seymour, a student at Tamalpais High. "It's also a place where we are building a community and finding mentorship and having open conversations about challenges students may face." Despite overwhelming support from those in attendance, the board voted 3-2 twice to end the contracts, citing budget constraints and redundancy with existing staff roles. "The Hub is working, Tenisha and Paul are working. I've watched it, I can tell you anecdotes: two kids get in a fight, they're back in class in an hour rather than getting suspended and sent home," said Tamalpais High teacher Preston Picus. "I have students who would have failed except for their interventions. They support my students every day in ways that I can't and the administration can't," added another teacher during public comment. The vote followed heated public comment, audience outbursts, and a brief recess called by the board. "I'm going to say we inappropriately approved those consultant contracts, because the services that were provided are not specialized services," said Board President Cynthia Roenisch, who voted against renewing the contracts. "They are services that are included in the job description of the assistant principals, of the deans, of teachers, of counselors." Other trustees discussed how much money the program costs. "I know nobody likes to hear this, but it's $250,000 and we have multiple schools and we have financial constraints," said Trustee Jennifer Holden. The board's decision left some parents in tears, including Christine DeBerry, whose son is biracial and received services at The Hub. "His freshman year was marred by racist incidents and he would have to come home and figure out how he was going to go back the next day," DeBerry said. "This issue has existed at that school for decades and no on-campus people have been able to solve it, because they don't have the trust and legitimacy that these consultants had," she added. Before the meeting at a rally outside, parents presented a petition with nearly 800 signatures in support of continuing the services. Some community members vowed to vote Roenisch out when her term ends. Roenisch said she hopes district and school leaders will work over the summer to develop a new structure that allows The Hub to remain open and continue supporting students.
Yahoo
7 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Petition started to keep support services for Black students at high school in Marin County
MILL VALLEY, Calif. (KRON) — There's a petition on regarding the students at Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley. It's urging the school board there to keep support services for Black students. After protests and calls for the district to make changes, Tamalpais High School added several resources for Black students during the 2024-2025 school year. One parent tells me those services could be going away In 2023, students at Tamalpais High School organized this walkout to protest racism. The hope was that it would lead to change, and Cristine Deberry says it worked. Her sons, ages 15 and 16, both attend the school. Healdsburg racist incident involving movers goes viral on TikTok 'The district, to their credit, identified supports and put those on campus, including a hub where African American students or any students could go during the school day,' Deberry said. Deberry says the school board is scheduled to vote Tuesday on getting rid of the support services. She reached out to the five board members to voice her concerns. When only two agreed to meet, the parent started an online petition on — gaining more than 400 signatures. 'We know that that kind of support can help. I know that in my own home those systems have helped my kids and what is really distressing right now is we know the district wants to end those services,' Deberry said. Popular Santa Cruz brewery opens first San Francisco location After President Trump took office, he called for the slashing of programs that promote diversity, equity and inclusion (D.E.I.), including within the U.S. Department of Education. KRON4 asked Deberry if she thinks there's any correlation between the national narrative and her local school board vote. 'I hope that isn't it because what we're dealing with here is active acts of racism. We aren't even having a conversation about wanting to increase the population of African American or Jewish students on campus,' Deberry said. 'We're saying that we would like them to feel safe from racist incidents that are happening at the campus.' KRON4 reached out to the school's superintendent for comment but have not heard back. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
San Francisco Chronicle
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Review: ‘Words for My Comrades' defines the complex politics of rapper Tupac Shakur
It's possible rapper Tupac Shakur first formulated his distaste for police brutality while still inside the womb. That's because his mother, Black Panther member Afeni Shakur, was heavily pregnant with him when she served as her own defense in New York City's infamous Panther 21 trial. How that baby would come to be revered as a titan of West Coast hip-hop — as well as a modern figurehead for revolution — serves as the premise for author Dean Van Nguyen's insightful new work examining Tupac Shakur's politics and socioeconomic experiences. In 'Words for My Comrades: The Political History of Tupac Shakur,' Van Nguyen contextualizes the hallowed lyrics of Shakur's music by contrasting a personal biography of the rapper with relevant history lessons on, among others, the Black Panthers and Malcolm X. Raised in poverty and educated by a mother who regularly risked everything in support of her beliefs, Shakur's upbringing somehow managed to place him in the epicenter of the burgeoning hip-hop movement. He died in 1996 at age 25. His life was never easy, but Shakur's presence in New York City, then the Bay Area via Marin City, marked fateful chapters in his story. Enlightening scenes include a spotlight on Shakur's brief time as a student at San Rafael's Tamalpais High School, with teacher Barbara Owens recalling the budding actor's singular talent for bringing Shakespeare to life. 'You will never, in your lifetime, hear 'Othello' as well as you just heard it now,' she recalls telling her classroom after one such memorable performance. It can be slightly difficult to follow the threads of Van Nguyen's narrative as it frequently jumps from the biographical to the historical to explain how figures like Black Panther cofounder Bobby Seale and moments like the 1966 Hunter's Point uprising in San Francisco ultimately informed Shakur's work. Other elements are presented with more ambiguity. Van Nguyen spends little time covering the more unsavory elements of Tupac's timeline, including his involvement in the accidental shooting death of a six-year-old boy in Marin City in 1992 and the sexual assault charges he faced in 1995. Both earn brief mentions in the text, but Van Nguyen fails to elucidate on whether either incident made a lasting impact on Shakur or his music. Following his Bay Area years, he ultimately anchored in Los Angeles and launched his career as a dual-threat rapper and actor. The fiery notions contained in his verses — in which Shakur forcefully argued against capitalism, police brutality and imperialism — first took flame in the form of real-life events. At one point, Van Nguyen recalls how the rapper abruptly left the set of John Singleton's film 'Poetic Justice' in 1992 following the announcement of a 'not guilty' verdict in the trial of the LAPD officers who beat Rodney King. 'Singleton later heard stories of Tupac driving down Wilshire Boulevard shooting out windows,' Van Nguyen writes. Shakur also saw firsthand the ravages inflicted by crack cocaine when his mother temporarily succumbed to the drug, forcing the 19-year-old to fully take control of his own life. Ultimately, Afeni would reconnect with her Black Panther family in New York and overcome her addiction, once again proving her uncanny capacity for resilience, but the chapter left lasting scars on the younger Shakur. It was all these elements — including extreme poverty — coupled with an inextinguishable pride that led her son to become a deity in the world of rap as well as a lasting symbol of resistance. From referencing Malcolm X's 'The Ballot or the Bullet' speech in his 1993 song 'Holla If Ya Hear Me' to the roles Tupac's music has continued to play in modern protests, like those waged in honor of George Floyd in 2020, it's obvious categorizing his contributions solely under the guise of music is, to Van Nguyen, a failure to recognize all that the late rapper gave and continues to give us. Once again, it all begins with the rapper's birth, when he was temporarily named Lesane Parish Crooks as a means of avoiding detection from government agencies eager to track the offspring of a high-ranking Black Panther member. By his first birthday, his title had been rightfully restored, with Afeni naming her son in honor of Tupac Amaru II, an Andean rebel who died fighting against Spanish colonial rule. 'The name proved to be a chilling prophecy that came to be,' Van Nguyen writes, 'but as Afeni explained, 'I wanted him to have the name of revolutionary, Indigenous people in the world. I wanted him to know he was part of a world culture and not just from a neighborhood.''
