Anti-Equity School Board Majority Trumps Black Student Success
By MVFREE Education Team, July 2025 Newsletter
The election of Jenny Holden to the Tam Union High School District (TUHSD) Board of Trustees in November 2024, cemented a three-member majority on the Board that is determined to dismantle programs and initiatives designed to address the District’s deep and longstanding racial inequities. Holden joined two-term Trustees Roenisch and Saavedra to create an anti-equity voting block that has sought to mask its intentions through behind-the-scenes maneuvering, pretextual legal and financial excuses, and political doublespeak.
For the past ten weeks, Trustees Roenisch, Saavedra and Holden have targeted the Black Student Success Team (BSST) at Tam High and the two Black professionals who created and ran the popular and effective program in the 2024-2025 school year.
The three are alone in their opposition to continuing the BSST contracts which have received overwhelming and unanimous support from the District Superintendent (who properly controls programmatic decisions), from Tam teachers and counselors more than 100 of whom wrote and spoke to the Board and rallied in support of the program, and from students, parents and community members who showed up in standing-room-only crowds at Board meetings to deliver heartfelt testimony and a petition with over 1600 signatures in support of the BSST leadership contracts.
A powerful community coalition has emerged—Friends of Tam District (FOTD)—to fight for educational equity in the TUSHD. MVFREE is proud to be a part of this committed group of parents, teachers, community members, and social justice and religious organizations. Follow FOTD. Join FOTD. FOTD has been working tirelessly to eliminate the barriers erected by the three Trustees to continuing the BSST. Ultimately, it was the FOTD’s offer of private funding—and ability to raise over $55,000 in pledges in just four days—that eliminated the Trustees’ budgetary excuse and forced them to reveal their deep ideological opposition to Black student services.
Tragically, as it stands today, the three Trustees will not allow the BSST leadership to continue their important work at Tam when school begins on August 20, but we are not giving up. We are united in support of a safe, equitable, and positive learning environment for all of our students. We are grateful to Trustees Green and Uhlhorn for their unwavering support for educational equity and are committed to stand with them every step of the way.
If you are just tuning in, here is the whole story…
The Challenges Facing Black Students at Tam
For decades of Black students at Tam, going to school has been a painful and traumatic experience: race-based social isolation; subtle and increasingly overt racist comments and behavior; inequitable academic expectations, student supports and discipline. No student can perform to his or her potential in this environment as the data plainly show.
In 2024, Black students in the TUHSD had the lowest performance of any racial group by a variety of measures: at or above standard for English Language Arts (Black students 33.3%; White students 74.6%); at or above standard for Math (Black students 18.75%; White students 56.9%); UC/CSU a-g completion (Black students 43%; White students 85%); AP course participation (Black students 20%; White students 55%). When it comes to failing grades and suspension rates Black students have, by far, the highest rates: D, F, or I semester grade (Black students 37%; White students 6%); suspension (Black students 19%; White students 1.8%).
From Fear and Alienation to Pride and Joy in a Single Year:
The Triumph of the Black Student Success Team
Last year, Black students at Tam High enjoyed unprecedented improvements in achievement (a 17% reduction in D, F, and I grades) and belonging (87% reported an increased sense of belonging at the school)—and this was no accident.
Two highly qualified and respected Black professionals with deep ties to the local Black community—Tenisha Tate and Paul Austin—were hired by the District in the midst of an escalating crisis of racist student behavior to address the longstanding social isolation and deep educational disparities suffered by Black students at Tam.
The two were tasked with implementing a community informed solution that emerged from many months of collaborative work by District administrators, faculty, and the Coalition for African American Achievement and Belonging. Tate and Austin established and ran the Black Student SuccessTeam (BSST) and “the Hub” a safe and culturally affirming space on the Tam campus where Black students received trauma-informed care and intensive, individualized supports.
The unanimous verdict from students, parents, teachers, and administrators was that the BSST was working, providing the sense of safety and belonging and the appropriate supports that Tam’s Black students needed to heal and to work to their potential. It seemed a foregone conclusion that the program would continue in the 2025-2026 school year and, it was hoped, be expanded to other District high schools.
Trustees’ Quiet Assault on Black Student Services
Roenisch and Saavedra who prepare the Board agendas initially attempted to quietly eliminate the BSST leadership by withholding their contracts from the agenda despite repeated requests from the public and fellow Trustees Green and Uhlhorn to agendize them. So long as the contacts were not on the agenda, the Board was prohibited by the Brown Act from considering them.
Then, at the end of a Board meeting on May 20—when the contracts were not on the agenda—Roenisch unilaterally declared that the decision had been made (by whom she did not say): the contracts would not be renewed. In the face of Green and Uhlhorn’s objections to this patent violation of the Brown Act, Roenisch finally relented and agreed to place the contracts on the Board’s June 3 agenda.
At the June 3 meeting, Roenisch, Saavedra, and Holden claimed to support the continuation of the BSST, even as they voted to cancel the leadership contracts citing “budgetary constraints” and the $250,000 cost as their primary concern.
From the beginning, the asserted budgetary justification seemed suspect: (1) the Trustees had not subjected any other program or contract in the District’s $92 million student services budget to this type of scrutiny; (2) the funding for the BSST contracts was already included in the educational services budget that had been approved by the District’s Budget Director; and (3) the Tam High Foundation had granted $50,000 for the Hub which would have significantly reduced the cost of the program to the District.
Community Steps Up To Pay for BSST Contracts
With the start of school fast approaching and the health and safety of students on the line, supporters stepped forward to remove the Trustees’ financial objections in the hope of restoring the BSST contracts.
Marin County Schools Superintendent, John Carroll, weighed in offering to help the TUHSD work “with other interested parties to find a way to fund the program for an additional year and develop an actionable, permanent plan.” Marin IJ (June 13, 2025). Friends of Tam District joined the effort, with a June 19 letter to the Board offering to develop community funding to help cover the cost of the program for the 2025-2026 school year, and requesting that the matter of private funding be placed on the Board’s June 24, agenda. Friends of Tam District Letter (June 19, 2025).
Again, Roenisch refused to put the new funding proposal on the agenda and was noncommittal when Trustee Uhlhorn pressed at the June 24 meeting for a properly noticed Board discussion of the matter.
It therefore came as a surprise to many when a notice appeared that the Board would discuss private funding of the BSST contracts at a special meeting on July 2. Friends of Tam District was cautiously optimistic and rushed to demonstrate the seriousness of our private funding proposal. With just four days before the July 2 meeting, we launched a pledge drive to support the contracts with community donations. We arrived at the July 2 Board meeting with over 200 pledges totaling more than $55,000 and a tentative agreement with a nonprofit sponsor to manage the continuing fundraising effort. (Many thanks to everyone who made a generous pledge!)
Trustees’ Ideological Agenda Unmasked
Arriving at the July 2 meeting, the hopeful Friends of Tam District soon realized we had stepped through the looking glass.
Roenisch, Saavedra, and Holden met the offer of private funding from Friends of Tam District—not with gratitude or cooperation—but with vitriol. The three took turns reading lengthy hostile monologues, hurling insults and false accusations against the Black professionals who designed and ran the BSST, against the Superintendent who supported them, and against the students, parents, teachers and community members who testified, wrote, and petitioned the Board in support of Black student services.
Jennifer Holden, who in her campaign survey said : “Let's work hand in hand to build a brighter future for our children and our community” spoke for nearly 20 minutes in a condescending tone promoting a faulty and facile statistical analysis. She went on to complain that she felt harassed and disrespected by community efforts to influence her decision on the BSST. Respect, of course, is a two way street. These three Trustees have routinely and publicly called anyone who supported the BSST contracts—from the students all the way up to the District Superintendent—”liar”, “lobbyist”, “agent”, “bully”, “manipulative”, “deceptive”, “ignorant”, “underhanded”, “untrustworthy”, “potentially illegal” (i.e., criminal), “unprofessional”, “white savior”, and other equally offensive epithets.
It seemed the three were more interested in airing their personal grievances about the community they were elected to serve than about the educational inequities, alienation and escalating racist incidents faced by Black students at Tam—and the reason finally became clear. Each of the Trustees, at last, openly proclaimed their unqualified ideological opposition to any targeted services for Black students.
In a jaw dropping example of political double-speak, the three took turns casting their opposition to Black student services in the language of civil rights.
Saavedra raged that he found it “offensive” to consider providing student services “based on skin color.”
Holden stated similarly that she deemed it “racist” to suggest that Tam’s Black students might need or deserve specially targeted services, “[O]ur teachers and staff members need to serve the needs of Black students equally to every other student in this community.” According to Holden, it is also “racist” to suggest that Black staff might be better equipped than White staff to address the trauma suffered by Black students due to racism at Tam.
Roenisch completed the circle, framing Black student needs as a purely academic issue which, in her view, require nothing beyond the basic academic interventions available to all students from in-house District staff. “Those are tier one and tier two services that all of our employees should already be doing.”
It is not surprising that the three Trustees have sought to conceal these views that are flatly at odds with state education laws and with the District racial equity policies that they are obligated as Trustees to uphold.
What’s Next?
The new District Superintendent, Dr. Goode, made his first public appearance at the otherworldly July 2 Board meeting. The Board’s majority directed him to devise an “in house” and “cost neutral” alternative to the BSST in the remaining weeks of summer vacation before the August 20 start of school. Goode was recruited from southern California and has no prior knowledge or experience with the unique racial history and challenges in this District, but has been tasked with delivering this proposed alternative at the Board’s July 14 workshop.
MVFREE will be closely watching the TUHSD Board going forward, and will look for opportunities to work with Dr. Goode, Trustees Green and Uhlhorn and the FOTD to strengthen and expand racial equity policies, programs, and services at the TUHSD
Stay tuned…