It's not about one issue.
It's how decisions get made on all of them.

A pattern of unanimous votes, not deliberation

Between December 2024 and March 2026, in an audit of 32 board meetings and 208 recorded votes in which the current three-member board majority was present together, that majority voted the same way as one another on 207 of 208 votes. That is 99.5 percent.

A five-member board is designed for deliberation. When 99.5 percent of recorded votes are unanimous within the majority, that is a caucus, not a deliberative body. This holds regardless of whether one agrees or disagrees with the outcomes.

Source: TUGA analysis of publicly available board meeting minutes and video, December 2024 through March 2026. Methodology and dataset available on request at info@tamgovernance.org.

Major decisions moving fast. Minor items receiving careful review.

Over the past school year, the same sequence has appeared across the district's most consequential decisions. Examples include the non-renewal of the contracts of the leaders of the Black Student Support Team at Tam High, the co-location of Tamiscal and San Andreas alternative schools, and the restructuring of TEAM Academy (a 30-year program serving approximately 52 students, communicated to families and students with a quick email from the principal), all of which followed the same arc.

In each of these decisions, the pattern is the same: a community or teacher recommendation or concern is surfaced, board questions on the underlying analysis are limited, alternative data or independent input is not requested, and the vote follows quickly.

However, topics this board wants to press forward are given ample time, endless debate, and are pushed through despite community objections.

The public record does not show a board unable to deliberate. It shows a board choosing to deliberate on some items and not on others.

A pattern of resistance to transparency

Local governance depends on the public's ability to see how decisions are being made. That requires timely responses to public records requests, substantive replies to constituent inquiries, and a willingness to make the reasoning behind board decisions available for review. On each of these fronts, the record shows a pattern of resistance.

Public records requests filed with the district over the past two school years have repeatedly missed the statutory response window and produced only a small fraction of the material the district's own search identified.

The same pattern appears in routine communication with the community. Emails from constituents on active board items have gone unread through the day of the vote, by trustees' own on-the-record acknowledgment. Requests for direct board communication about major program changes go unanswered and unaddressed. Community members raising documented concerns weeks and months before a board decision have found their questions unanswered.

Transparency is not a favor. It is the minimum standard the public has a right to expect from those it elects.

Community input treated as a formality

An analysis of the public-comment record documents more than 600 community requests made to the board. Three resulted in an official board action.

Due to the lack of communication from the current board on key decisions, the volume of public comment has risen dramatically, and those comments remain unanswered.

Community engagement is not a metric this board struggles to generate. It is a resource this board is choosing not to use.

Source: TUGA analysis of publicly available public-comment records. See methodology for full definitions and dataset. Dataset also available on request at info@tamgovernance.org.

The example the board sets

Serving on a public board is not only a decision-making role. It is a modeling role. Children in this district watch how their elected representatives treat one another, treat community members, and treat the families sitting in the room. The record over the past year documents conduct the district would not accept from a student on its own campus.

A sitting trustee has sent emails to a constituent containing profanity and personal insults, an exchange that was placed on the public record at the December 15, 2025 board meeting. The public comment of a family member reading a letter about a student killed in the Woodacre car accident was cut off mid-sentence by the presiding officer at the April 14, 2026 board meeting. Coverage of trustee conduct on the current board has appeared in the Redwood Bark's “District in Divide” investigation (March 20, 2026) and the Marin Independent Journal (May 16, 2026).

The district asks students every day to disagree respectfully, to hear each other out, and to conduct themselves in ways that reflect well on the school. The community is entitled to ask the same of the people who sit at the front of the room.

Spending has risen substantially. Rankings have not.

Per California Department of Education Current Expense of Education data (Ed Code § 41372), TUHSD's per-student spending has grown from approximately $19,700 in 2018-19 to approximately $27,700 in 2024-25. That is an increase of roughly 41 percent, well above statewide averages.

Over the same period, the district's statewide rank moved from #251 out of 1,525 California districts to #335 out of 1,543, a drop of 84 places. In percentile terms, from the 83rd to the 78th.

Reasonable people can disagree about the right level of school funding. Nobody, on any side of that debate, wants to see funding rise while outcomes decline.

Administrative compensation has grown far faster than the workforce

Per California payroll records published by Transparent California, which draws from the district's own state-mandated filings, administrator total compensation rose from approximately $4.5 million in 2014 to approximately $9.2 million in 2023, an increase of roughly 106 percent. Over the same period, total district employment grew by 6.6 percent.

The district's own SACS filings (Function 7000, General Administration) report administrative expenditure growing from approximately $6.7 million in 2018-19 to a projected $10.9 million in 2024-25, an increase of roughly 63 percent in six years.

No community discussion of the reasoning behind this growth appears in the board's public deliberations of the past several years.

Two of three high schools declining; one holding

Comparing U.S. News & World Report rankings from 2019-20 to 2025-26:

• Redwood High School: #67 to #50 (improved)
• Tamalpais High School: #97 to #122 (down 25 places)
• Archie Williams High School: #163 to #250 (down 87 places)

Redwood's continued strength deserves acknowledgement. The trajectories at the other two schools deserve the district's serious attention.

State assessment scores have not recovered

Per California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) data, the share of 11th graders meeting or exceeding standard in English Language Arts fell from 77.1 percent in 2022-23 to 71.4 percent in 2023-24, then continued declining to 68.7 percent in 2024-25. That is a total drop of 8.4 percentage points over two years.

Mathematics scores fell from 58.2 percent to 53.5 percent in 2023-24, then edged up to 54.2 percent in 2024-25. Essentially flat over two years, and below the 2022-23 baseline.

The community has not seen the board publicly deliberate these results at a regular meeting.

Source: CAASPP public reporting, California Department of Education, Tamalpais Union High School District, Grade 11.

Community trust indicators point in one direction

On June 16, 2026, the board declined to continue the parcel-tax exploratory committee, effectively removing a potential renewal from the November 2026 ballot and deferring the question to 2028. Trustees raised the concern on the record that the district faces a fiscal cliff before 2028.

The Board President and two additional trustees are on the November 2026 ballot. The decision to defer the parcel-tax question past the election is a decision voters are entitled to see clearly, in that context.