Let’s start with The Bad

You'll never guess what Cynthia Roenisch and Kevin Saavedra are doing.

Well… They’re running for school board.

Again.

Eight years in, and somehow they still think the district needs them more than it needs a functioning budget.

But seriously: this is almost funny if you don’t think about it too hard. Eight years of incompetence, eight years of worsening test scores, eight years of increasingly bad budget problems, eight years of open contempt for the public they’re supposed to serve, eight years of steering this district toward the rocks - and they still want more.

What is going on with that kind of psychology? It’s hard to shake the feeling that nothing short of a fully broke district and shuttered schools would satisfy them.

But maybe there’s more to this than raw ego.

Start with Saavedra. Public payroll records on Transparent California show Tam District trustees can enroll in the district’s health benefits - and by the district’s own reported figures that comes out to more than $24,000 a year funded by the same budget Saavedra has spent the last eight years mismanaging. He’s not just steering the district toward a fiscal cliff. He’s doing it while drawing a personal benefit off the district’s books the whole time.

Then there’s the succession plan. Emily Uhlhorn is not running again. It’s hard to blame her for being done after two years of getting shouted down by a board majority that has made governing this district look like a hostage situation.

In her place, Roenisch has recruited a replacement of her own: Leslie Harlander, described by multiple sources as one of Roenisch’s closest friends. If Harlander wins, the arrangement is obvious - not a fresh voice, but a proxy vote. The plan practically writes itself: make Emily’s time on the board miserable enough that she leaves, then slide a loyalist into the open seat. If you think Cynthia has been a depressing burden these last two years just see what happens if she gets reelected with Harlander in tow.

Ooof.

The Good

Fortunately, four other candidates are running, and at least a few of them look like the real alternative this district has been missing.

Brian Sutherland is a constitutional attorney with a background in voting rights work, and his campaign is built around something this board has been missing for two years: sound judgment. He served as deputy director of voter protection in Iowa during the 2008 presidential campaign and his platform runs on specifics rather than slogans: budget tradeoffs made transparently with the community, real equity work instead of gestures, and a clear-eyed approach to newer pressures like phone use and AI in classrooms. Someone who has spent a career on election law and institutional accountability is unlikely to be intimidated by a board majority that treats transparency as optional. brianfortamdistrict.org

Joy Koo brings an engineering background and a substantial record of volunteering for the district already. That’s not nothing: she’s been doing unpaid work for this district before asking anyone for a vote, which is more than can be said for the incumbents she’d be replacing. You can see her Facebook page here.

Valerie Wynn taught at Archie Williams High School for fifteen years. Everyone I’ve spoken with who knows her professionally speaks highly of her. She doesn’t appear to have a campaign website or Facebook page up yet - worth watching as the race develops, since visibility matters in a high-turnout election.

Maria Sandoval is the wild card. I don’t have much to go on here. Nobody I’ve talked to seems to know her, and multiple people who’ve tried to reach her for a conversation say she hasn’t been willing to engage. That’s not disqualifying on its own, but in a race this consequential, voters deserve a candidate willing to show up and answer questions. I’ll keep digging and update as I learn more.

The Stakes

For anyone paying attention over the last two years, the Tam District board of trustees has turned into a clown car of incompetence, toxicity, dysfunction, and personal drama. It hasn’t been about the kids. It hasn’t been about education. It’s been the Kevin-and-Cynthia show, playing out their own internal dysfunction in public while the school system absorbs the damage.

Watch a few other school board meetings around Marin County and it becomes obvious fast: this isn’t normal. Not even close.

The students and parents of the Tam District deserve better than this. It’s time to spread the word.

If you want to share some of my pieces with your friends and neighbors so they understand just how broken this board has become, these two have gotten the most traction so far:

• “’Go Fuck Yourself, You Stupid Old Crone’” - 11,000 reads

• “Roenisch’s Narcissistic Gambit” - 8,500 reads

The Setup

At the June 16th Tam District board meeting, Cynthia Roenisch and Kevin Saavedra killed months of work on a single agenda item. The item – whether to place a parcel tax renewal on this November’s ballot – had been in front of a district committee for weeks. It didn’t survive the discussion.

Watch the meeting at the 1:37:44 mark and the dynamic is hard to miss. Superintendent Courtney Goode, who has grown increasingly servile to Roenisch as the year has gone on, opens the floor. Before Emily Uhlhorn – the trustee who has actually done the committee work on this measure – can speak, Kevin Saavedra jumps in ahead of her to stake out his position first.

That’s worth sitting with. Saavedra has no history working on a parcel tax or bond campaign in this district. He doesn’t know what it takes to build the community support these measures require. But he had an agenda: to get on the record before the trustee who’d actually done the work could speak.

To his credit – and this is a low bar – his argument at least had a shape to it. Saavedra’s position was that the district should wait to see how much worse its finances get before going out for more money, so it can ask for a bigger number later. Unfortunately this is an inherently bad idea: parcel taxes are hard enough to pass without waiting for the worst possible moment, and it invites unnecessary stress on staff and families in the meantime. But it’s an actual argument, delivered in his usual halting, jargon-mangling style.

What his argument ignores entirely: securing the parcel tax now means the district can go back to voters again in two years with a modest ask, instead of gambling everything on one large measure in 2028 that voters are far more likely to reject. Waiting doesn’t make the eventual ask easier. It makes it a single, extremely risky high-stakes bet instead of two manageable ones.

I really pine for the first six years when we had Saavedra just intermittently showing up to meetings and sitting silently, drinking out of his coffee mug.

The False Claim

Roenisch’s contribution starts at 1:43:22. Jenny Holden, who has also been on the committee working toward a November parcel tax, asked a few questions about Kevin’s crooked argument. It’s clear she’s talked to several experts who agree that going out in November is the way to go.

Roenisch cut her off at the legs. (Don’t worry, Jenny likes it.) It is clear that Roenisch has not talked to any experts, but she doesn’t want to go out for a parcel tax. How did she come to this conclusion? Well, we can make some guesses. But she tells a pretty obvious lie to start things off:

The district, she said, has never gone out three years ahead of an expiring parcel tax. She makes it sound like the experts are recommending something unprecedented.

That’s not what the district’s own history shows.

Since the original parcel tax was passed in 1989, the district has gone out 2-3 years ahead of its expiration EVERY SINGLE TIME.

This will be the FIRST TIME in the history of the parcel tax that the district is not going out 2-3 years ahead of time.

Because there likely won’t be a countywide or statewide election in 2027, that means the district is risking everything on 2028, with less than a year to spare, which will be the first time since 1989 that they’ve made such a foolhardy decision. If the district loses in 2028 then they’re on the hook to pay for a special election in 2029 which could cost hundreds of thousands and will be ridiculously tough to pass.

And if it doesn’t pass the district loses 40% of its money. If it doesn’t pass, the district just about dies.

Hold on! Let’s just do some polling, Emily pleads around 1:45:44. Let’s just get the data to inform our decision.

NO! Cynthia tells her. We do not need data, I already know more than data. I already know everything and that’s all you need to know. (I’m paraphrasing, but watch it for yourself.)

Jenny and Kevin line up behind Cynthia.

But why, you might be asking, would Cynthia Roenisch want to take such an unprecedented action and put the district at such enormous risk?

The Real Motive

So the question is why. Why would two sitting trustees turn down the best political environment for a parcel tax in a decade, misstate the district’s own election history to justify it, and refuse even to look at the polling that might contradict them?

If you guessed Re-Election then you’re the big winner!

Roenisch and Saavedra are both up for reelection this November, seeking an unprecedented third term after eight years already on the board. They are also, by any honest measure, deeply unpopular with the community they govern. Their clearest – arguably only – path back into office is an election nobody’s paying attention to.

A parcel tax on the ballot changes that. It’s the kind of measure that drives turnout, brings out voters who don’t normally show up for school board races, and puts a spotlight on exactly the trustees whose conduct in these meetings has become public embarassment. Kill the parcel tax and the spotlight dims. A quiet, low-turnout election is the only scenario in which Roenisch and Saavedra plausibly win a third term in their pursuit of 4 more years of feeling powerful and special.

Blocking the parcel tax doesn’t just delay a funding measure the district needs. It’s also, conveniently, the only strategy available to the two trustees who’d lose badly if voters were paying attention.

The Question

For eight years Cynthia and Kevin have been on this school board. For the first six years Kevin missed meetings and it was hard to tell if he was paying attention when he was there. Cynthia tried her best to ruin things but only behind closed doors. She didn’t have the gavel and so her attacks on Tam District teachers and staff, her attacks decorum, on professionalism, her lack of expertise and her inability to understand large concepts was kept largely out of the public eye. According to teachers who work with her, students who have been in her classroom, trustees who have been in the room with her and district employees who have had to work with her the picture is clear: Cynthia Roenisch is the worst possible mixture of Mr. Bumble and Dolores Umbridge. A petty, small, mean spirited woman who has leveraged her rude behavior, contempt of the public and irrational belief in her own limited abilities into a small slice of power which she considers a dictatorship for life in the Tam District.

And now she’s showing that she is so fixated on keeping this little bit of power, that she has such a dramatic need for the attention she gets from being on the board that she is willing to do almost anything to keep it.

In the past I’ve made the claim that Roenisch and her cronies are destroying the Tam District in pursuit of goals that nobody understands. Now I realize that she’s breaking the Tam District just so that she can control it further. There is no real goal for her other than control. Roenisch is addicted to feeling like she’s got power, she’s obsessed with feeling like she’s in total control and there is nothing she won’t sacrifice to keep that feeling coming.

Let’s start with the obvious: the Marin IJ is owned by a hedge fund with documented ties to Donald Trump. So when their coverage of the Tam District School Board reads like a press release from the trustees themselves, that’s not an accident. That’s the product. Which is why it’s not surprising they handed Jenny Holden an opinion column. What is surprising is how badly she used it.

Her opening is almost promising. “Last year, many heard about the unacceptable behavior unfolding at Tamalpais Union High School District board meetings,” she writes. “Since then, it’s only gotten worse.”

Yes! Someone is finally going to reckon with what this board has done. The firing of two outstanding Black educators over reasons that kept shifting. Jenny Holden painting Paul Austin and Tenisha Tate as grifters making “full time pay for part time work.” The open mockery of hundreds of concerned community members. The racist comments from the dais. The sneering contempt for supporters of the TEAM program. The abuse hurled at parents and students from San Andreas and Tamiscal. Three board members mocking community members during public comment. Kevin Saavedra writing obscenity-laced attacks on women in the community and Cynthia agreeing that the women deserved it. The behavior of this board is UNACCEPTABLE! Finally Jenny Holden said something smart.

Oh. Wait. That’s not what she means.

Jenny isn’t talking about the board’s behavior. She’s talking about the people her board has spent the last two years antagonizing. She means the people who care about their kids and their schools enough to show up to board meetings are the issue. She means to say that the people who are trying to stop the Cynthia-Kevin-Jenny show from destroying the Tam District are the problem.

Of course she thinks that.

To be clear about what she actually documents: some of it is genuinely bad. If someone shouted “go back to Mexico” at a Latino board member, that person should be publicly shamed. If someone followed an attorney to her car and yelled “go back to India,” that’s ugly and wrong. No serious person defends it.

But Jenny doesn’t stop there, because stopping there would require her to make a distinction between the ugliness she can legitimately condemn and the community anger she helped create. Instead she lumps it all together: the racial slurs, the “baseless complaints with the state,” the “online misinformation,” the “misogynistic caricatures,” all of it painted with the same brush as evidence that the people opposing this board are, in her words, “increasingly unhinged and unsafe.”

Quick question, Jenny: Did the Tam District have this problem before you handed Cynthia and Kevin the majority last year? Or has all of this ‘bad behavior’ coincided with you and Kevin devoting yourselves to Cynthia?

Here’s what Jenny leaves out: the complaints filed with the state include questions about whether Kevin Saavedra actually lives in his district, a legitimate question that Jenny has no interest in answering. The “misinformation” she references goes unspecified, because naming it would require engaging with it. And the community anger she characterizes as intimidation has a cause she declines to examine.

She writes that “communications are deliberately distorted, selectively misrepresented and weaponized as supposed evidence of wrongdoing.” This is an astonishing sentence from a trustee who stood at that dais and misrepresented the workload of two Black educators she was voting to fire. Either she lied about the data or didn’t understand how the data worked, but either way Jenny Holden knows something about deliberate distortion. She practices it.

Then comes the lecture on process. Public comment, she explains patiently, “is not a back-and-forth dialogue.” We agree, Jenny! So can you tell us why Cynthia consistently interrupts people during their public comment? Why she stops public comment to insert her own remarks? Public comment is definitely not supposed to be a back and forth, so why does Cynthia think she can break protocol and hurl abuse on a whim?

Jenny assures us that “reasonable people can disagree on issues. That is not only expected, it’s healthy.”

Sure, fine. Derivative, but fine.

But what she doesn’t explain is what people are supposed to do when the board ignores them. When the community showed up in massive numbers against the firing of Paul Austin and Tenisha Tate, more than 100 staff signatures, hundreds of people outside, every news station covering it, this board fired them anyway. When the Marin County schools superintendent told them to reconsider, they ignored him too. When outside funding was offered to keep those educators in place, the board declined it.

When kids can’t have a full schedule in the fall because the board has mismanaged the district, what should parents do? Just accept it?

What should teachers and community members do when the board majority makes one thing very clear: if you don’t agree with them, they don’t give a damn what you think?

Should parents and teachers and students let Cynthia and Kevin and Jenny spread falsehoods, offer extremely inexpert opinions, and laugh in the faces of the people they are hurting and just go home?

How much damage should the public allow the Cynthia-Kevin-Jenny show to do before they fight back?

And how many teachers have you talked to this month, Jenny? How many parents of students that aren’t in your little group of anti-ethnic studies zealots? How many students of color? I’d love to see receipts, because I talk to a lot of people and none of them have heard a single thing from any of you.

In the eight years that Kevin and Cynthia have been on this board, the Tam District has been in steady decline. The finances went from stable to a crisis requiring millions in cuts. Classes have been eliminated so aggressively that students may not be able to build a full schedule this fall. CAASPP scores have fallen. The Black Student Success Team, an impressively successful program built to support the district’s most vulnerable students, collapsed after the board fired the people running it with no plan and no idea of what to do next. Teacher morale is at a low that longtime educators in the district describe as unlike anything they’ve seen before. Without input from teachers or students or community members, this board attacks programs, dismantles excellence, and punishes anyone who dares ask why.

Jenny Holden close her piece by declaring, “We will not be intimidated.” But nobody is trying to intimidate her into being a good trustee. They’re trying to tell her she’s doing a terrible job. Those are different things, and the fact that she can’t tell the difference explains a lot about how she got here.

The community that built its identity around excellent public schools is watching those schools get worse in real time. People keep pointing it out, but Cynthia seems constitutionally incapable of grasping how much expertise she lacks and so rather than reckon with dissent, she runs from it and hides behind Jenny and Kevin and their simple board majority.

The community’s response to years of terrible leadership isn’t the problem. It’s the predictable result of a board that decided, over and over, that it didn’t have to answer to anyone.

Jenny is concerned that the toxicity of this current board situation is creating an environment where qualified people don’t want to run for office. I agree. And the best solution I can think of is for trustees like her to step aside so that the Tamalpais Union High School District can finally start to heal.

The Marin IJ recently published a characteristically toothless piece on Kevin Saavedra titled: Tam Union Trustee cleared by the FPPC as district rancor escalates.

According to the article, Saavedra was accused of violating financial disclosure rules but the case was dismissed by the Fair Political Practices Commission for lack of evidence.

Fresh off the dismissal Kevin took a victory lap, telling the Marin IJ that the accusation is part of a larger scenario in which he is being mistreated by the community. For no reason at all, apparently. (I was honestly laughing.) Kevin’s mistreatment is an ‘indictment of the community’ according to Saavedra himself. That’s rich coming from the trustee who impulsively sneers at community members who disagree with him, the guy who mocks parents and students, the incessantly rude board member who earlier this year wrote “Go fuck yourself, you stupid old crone” in an email to a woman in our community.

You can’t make this stuff up!

The Marin IJ failed to do any actual reporting on Kevin Saavedra. Because if they had, they would have found that the three businesses listed in their article, Richmond Grown LLC, Richmond Grown Holdings LLC, and Seventh Wave Investment Partners LLC, are not based here in Marin County, but in San Francisco. And they are not just based in San Francisco, but they are based at the same San Francisco apartment address. They are based at the same San Francisco apartment address that Kevin Saavedra gave to law enforcement when he was arrested in 2021 as his home address.

Seriously.

According to public records, in September 2021 Kevin Saavedra was arrested for DUI by the Marin County Sheriff. The address on his driver’s license given at that time was that same address in San Francisco. He later pled guilty and was sentenced to three years of probation, and again provided that same San Francisco address. In fact, in all of the publicly available legal documents, Kevin never lists an address that is different than this apartment in San Francisco and certainly not an address in Marin County.

It’s worth noting he was a sitting school board member at the time of his arrest, with a board meeting just days prior. I’ll leave the public to draw their own conclusions. I do hope he got the help he needed.

But his DUI isn’t the only concerning thing here. What matters is the pattern. His driver’s license says an apartment in San Francisco. His three businesses list the same San Francisco address. The address he gave police in 2021 is the same address in San Francisco.

This matters because in 2022, when Saavedra ran for reelection to the Tam District School Board, he told the Marin IJ he lives in San Anselmo. Residency in the district isn’t a technicality. It’s a legal requirement to hold the seat. San Francisco isn’t in the Tam Union High School District.

At all.

If you’re one of his handful of friends in Marin County you might be saying: Maybe he owns property in both places? First, that wouldn’t matter. He has to live in the district. But I checked anyway. A search of the Marin County Assessor’s records shows no record of Kevin Saavedra ever owning property in Marin County.

So here’s the question that now demands a direct answer: Has Kevin Saavedra been commuting from San Francisco to sit on a school board here in Marin County? As student test scores have declined, as we’ve been cutting classes and teachers, as morale in the Tam Union has spiraled under this current board leadership, was part of the explanation that one of the trustees most intent on undermining our district doesn’t even live here or feel responsible to this community?

For all we’ve suffered at the hands of this short sighted, callous, contemptuous, venomous person who cares so little for students and teachers, for all our kids have endured from this petty man who props himself up on his tiny throne, it’s time that we all know where he lives.

The parents, students, and community members of the Tamalpais Union High School District deserve a direct answer: Does Kevin Saavedra even live here?

Because under California Government Code Section 1770, this is not just an interesting question. It is a legal one with a specific answer and specific consequences. California law states that a school board seat becomes automatically vacant when a member ceases to be a resident of the district. Not eventually vacant. Not subject to a vote. Automatically vacant.

If the public record is right, Kevin Saavedra must vacate his seat. Further: his seat on the Tam District school board is already vacant under California law. Every vote he has cast, every decision he has participated in, every action he has taken as a board member while living in San Francisco would have been taken by someone with no legal right to be in that room.

The records are clear. The law is clear. Kevin better have one hell of an explanation or he needs to pack his bags.

Imagine a small group of adults who have figured out that they can walk onto a school campus, slap a child across the face, and nobody is going to stop them. They’re not powerful. They’re not particularly smart. They just have money and time, and they’ve discovered a loophole: schools are an easy target. Legally unprotected. Politically exposed. And when they need funding, utterly vulnerable.

That’s the Coalition of Sensible Taxpayers. That’s CO$T.

They’ve been doing this for more than a decade in Marin County — showing up at school districts, making demands, running scare campaigns, poisoning ballot measures with misinformation — and walking away clean. They don’t educate children. They don’t work in schools. Several district administrators who’ve sat across the table from them have told me that they don’t especially understand how schools are funded, how parcel taxes work, or what happens to classrooms when the money doesn’t come through. What they understand is that nobody is going to hit back.

So they keep swinging.

Here’s the CO$T playbook, as described to me by school district officials across Marin County who have been through it:

First, CO$T people will request meetings with your district office. They come in with demands, criteria, conditions — a whole bureaucratic vocabulary of “sensible tax criteria” and “affordability benchmarks” designed to make it sound like they’re offering guidance. They’re not. They’re sizing up how scared you are. These meetings are intimidation sessions dressed up as civic engagement, and they work because the stakes are existential. In California, the state doesn’t adequately fund public schools. It never has. Local parcel taxes and bonds aren’t supplemental — they are the difference between a functioning school and a failing one. CO$T knows this. That’s why they park themselves at the door.

If you don’t capitulate to their terms, they go to the voters. They run ads. They flood mailboxes. They brand your necessary, legally structured tax measure as a “sneak tax” or a “pension slush fund” or part of a “tax tsunami,” because wordplay is cheaper than doing actual research. And they get away with it because most voters don’t have time to read a 40-page school district budget, and a simple scary phrase lands harder than the truth.

That’s the whole game. Not accountability. Not reform. Just kicking educators and kids.

Last year they went after Ross Valley School District. Let’s be precise about who Ross Valley is: it is the lowest-funded K-8 district in all of Marin County, receiving $10,985 per student — compared to $48,355 at the county’s highest-funded district. These are not children of privilege. This is not a bloated bureaucracy swimming in money. This is a district that was already running on fumes.

CO$T ran their campaign. School officials say they misled voters about the tax increase. They ran anonymous online ads with no “paid for by” disclosure — a violation of the state Voter Reform Act. They called a modest per-square-footage parcel tax a deceptive money grab, despite the fact that the per-square-foot structure was the very format CO$T had previously championed as more equitable. They cherry-picked a low-turnout special election to cry foul about a low-turnout special election.

The measure failed. CO$T celebrated. They sent out fundraising emails asking donors to keep them “financially ready for whatever comes next.”

Then the state fined them for running the illegal ads. CO$T president Mimi Willard said it was her consultants’ fault. The organization dedicated to transparency and accountability tried to blame the help.

But the fine came too late. The damage was done. Ross Valley is now cutting teachers, cramming more children into classrooms, watching facilities deteriorate. CO$T got their licks in, and they feel great about it.

What’s in it for them?

That’s the question nobody seems to ask. CO$T is structured as a nonprofit. Nobody’s getting personally rich. So why the obsession? Why the gleeful fundraising emails after killing a parcel tax for Marin’s poorest-funded school district? Why the years of showing up, unsolicited, at school board meetings across the county to run their routines?

One can only conclude that it just pleases them. Because they can get away with it, and hurting schools and communities is its own reward.

Schools are soft targets. Educators are not fighters. Parcel tax campaigns are run by volunteers and PTAs who have day jobs and children to raise. CO$T is a semi-professional operation with plenty of time on their hands. They’ve refined the playbook, trained on the language, built the donor list. They know how to make a $719-a-year parcel tax sound like a confiscation, how to make a nine-year renewal sound like a permanent obligation, how to make “help fund your local school” sound like fraud.

One administrator told me last year that “CO$T just feels like what soulless, heartless finance ghouls do when they retire.” I’m not sure that they are retired.

What they are is disciplined, funded, and entirely unconcerned with what happens to the kids after the vote is over. CO$T gets whatever it gets out of the attack and they start looking for who to hit next.

But for schools like Ross Valley, the classrooms get a little more crowded, a few more teachers quietly start looking for work in better-funded districts, and the gap between the richest schools in Marin and the poorest ones gets a little wider.

CO$T calls that sensible.

The rest of us should call it what it is: abject nastiness.

A new Substack follower caught my attention recently. I make it a practice to check out anyone who follows my work. My writing is niche—focused almost entirely on Marin County readers who value social justice, quality education, and resisting the right-wing takeover of our country.

This particular follower’s profile listed Marin County as their location. That’s where the commonality ended.

The articles they’ve liked and commented “Great post!” on tell a different story: anti-immigrant screeds, attacks on DEI programs, standard conservative fare. They don’t post content themselves, but their engagement reveals their priorities—an article about how Minnesota children are being indoctrinated by radical leftists into opposing ICE, a piece by Sam Harris (known for his Islamophobic views) calling for increased violence by the Israeli government, and a defense of “tolerating intolerance” that essentially advocates for letting hateful people express their hatred publicly without facing any consequences.

Not exactly my cup of tea.

A closer look at their profile photo triggered recognition. I remembered seeing this person at the December 15th Tam Union High School District Board of Trustees meeting. During public comment this person identified themselves as a leader of Tam Union Together, the anti-ethnic studies group that’s been monopolizing board meetings for the last year or so. Rather than addressing the agenda item (a school merger), this new follower of mine used their allotted time to praise Kevin Saavedra and justify his attacks on community members.

So now I get it. The anti-ethnic studies conservatives, the people always sucking up public comment time to howl about their poor white fragility and how mean it is to talk about oppression and how bad it is for their white children to hear the truths about history, these people are throwing in their lot with Kevin Saavedra and Cynthia Roenisch. Their crusade against teaching kids the truth about history (“It will hurt their poor ears and they might die!”) is warping into a defense of what is essentially indefensible governance by two of the very worst school board members Marin County has ever seen.

The pattern was always there. Saavedra appeared to harbor right-wing views while attempting to obscure them. The anti-ethnic studies faction clearly positioned themselves well to the right of typical Marin politics. What’s new is the evidence of active coordination between these groups.

Let me offer a framework for understanding what’s happening.

Generally in politics there are two reactions to events and ideas. One is to ask “What will happen to all people?” And the other is to ask “What will happen to me, and to people who look like me and think like me?”

This distinction roughly maps onto our liberal-conservative divide. Liberals ask “What about all the people, even those who have the least power and have been historically harmed the most by our systems?” Conservatives ask “What about me? What about me and the people who look like me and think like me?”

This resolves itself into two diverging points of action. Liberals move, generally, to make society fairer and more just for everyone. Conservatives move, generally, to raise up people who look like them and think like them—an agenda that very often requires hurting and exploiting people who who don’t look like them or think like them.

Of course this is an oversimplification but it’s a useful one. For now we can leave off with the hypocrisy of some white liberals and ignore the Candace Owenses of the world who parrot the racist conservative talking points for money even while those talking points hurt people who look like them. What matters is the fundamental choice: working toward a better society for all, or prioritizing yourself and people who share your identity and worldview.

Right now if you are a white person who only cares about making the country great for people who look like you and think like you, then you buy a convicted sexual abuser’s red hat and you go out in the streets and demand violence against immigrants and the LGBTQ community and people of color and that the US continue to fund the genocide of the Palestinian people.

But that approach doesn’t work in Marin County. This is a deeply liberal community where such open displays would make you both a social outcast and a political pariah. For Marin County residents interested only in benefiting themselves and people who look and think like them, subtlety becomes necessary.

You say you think DEI is going too far. You say that the ethnic studies course focuses too much on oppression and not enough on how happy people of color have been or how good their food is. You say that two top level Black educators are slick hucksters and lie about the data when you fire them. You might wear your red hat around the house and tell your true ideas at your small, small dinners with like minded people. But in public you say “Look, I’m all for equality, really, I am, but isn’t this whole thing just a bit too much? Was it really all that bad for Black and Brown people? People are upset, sure, but is this really too much violence? Maybe this much violence is justified, right?“

And that’s who we have here.

Let me help the 90% of Marin County that absolutely despises this conservative insanity understand.

Take a look at who we’re dealing with and how they operate.

First, we have the obvious conservatives among us, the flailing Republican candidates who take a reliable and increasingly sad beating every November. But the real threat isn’t the people who advertise their politics. It’s the coordinated network of conservatives hiding beneath the surface who are undermining our systems.

This is the same network that spent months fighting our ethnic studies course, showing up to board meetings with the same recycled talking points about “divisiveness” and “age-appropriate content.” This is the same network that ran a sophisticated campaign two years ago to get Jenny Holden elected—presenting her as a moderate, concerned parent while obscuring her actual agenda until it was too late. And now, with their cover partially blown, they’re doubling down: working hard to re-elect Kevin Saavedra and Cynthia Roenisch.

This fall the people trying to destroy the Tam District won’t do you the favor of putting on the red MAGA hat or an “I Love ICE” bumper sticker. They’ll just be telling you to vote for Saavedra and Roenisch in November.

Read that email closely.

Let’s be clear about what we’re looking at - this is an unsolicited email from Kevin Saavedra, trustee for the Tamalpais Union High School District and current Clerk, to a group called MVFREE - the Mill Valley Force For Racial Equity and Empowerment.

Who sends an email like this to a non-profit advocacy group? What kind of intellectual capacity does this signal? Where is the impulse control? Where is the sense of dignity?

Great questions.

And these questions keep coming up about Kevin Saavedra who quite often uses his official position—and, repeatedly, his official district email account—to harass, intimidate, and demean members of the public who criticized him or whose views he dislikes.

Saavedra sent that unsolicited email to the community advocacy group, MVFree, instructing them not to use the term “Latinx.” He did not argue the merits of the term. He did not offer cultural or linguistic context. Instead, he opened with profanity and closed by accusing the recipients - people he does not know - of being “ignorant white saviors.”

What in the world are we looking at? Who thinks this kind of behavior is acceptable?

But wait, there’s more. Here’s Kevin attacking another community member about a mean email she sent to Cynthia Roenisch:

Kevin is writing this level of abuse at a community member from his official TUHSD email. It’s almost too much to believe.

Just look at what the email does: it threatens her credibility, personalizes the conflict, and mirrors the very bullying he claims to condemn. “Go fuck yourself you stupid old crone.”

“But wait!” you’re saying. “Sure, he lost his temper and sent an incredibly abusive email to a community member. Maybe he was just having a bad day. I’m sure he cooled off and apologized.”

You must be new here.

He goes after this same community member again:

What we are seeing is remarkable abuse from someone who is supposed to be a leader in our community. What stands out in Kevin Saavedra’s email exchanges with this community member is not just anger or political disagreement. It reflects a deliberate pattern of coercive behavior designed to unsettle, dominate, and silence.

The intimidation pattern is obvious. First he initiates contact - she did not email him. He emailed her first.

Then he leverages his position as a trustee, and repeatedly implies public, professional, or reputational consequences. He alternates between lecturing her about “ethics” and attacking her character, projecting his own conduct onto her while keeping the threat deliberately vague. This is not disagreement or poor tone, rather it it comes off as a calculated effort to dominate and silence a community member by exploiting power imbalance and fear.

All of this comes to a ridiculous, offensive crash at the December 15th Tamalpais Union High School District Board of Trustees Meeting.

Clown Show Car Wreck

I need you to watch this board meeting from the 24-minute mark. This is when public comment begins.

To catch you up: the preceding 24 minutes are a presentation by the new superintendent on combining the two alternative education schools in the Tam District: Tamiscal and San Andreas. The presentation is fine, the reasoning logical to a point. I’ve spoken with dozens of parents, teachers and community members—the issue is complicated. These two schools offer terrific opportunities for students who struggle at comprehensive sites. But enrollment at both schools is very low, the teacher-to-student ratio is extremely high, and it’s hard to argue that cutting money from other Tam sites is better. What I can say is that trusting a school board led by three trustees who lack any credibility to make important decisions like this is essentially impossible.

Starting at 24 minutes:

The first three speakers all ask the community to be nicer the board. None request that the board be civil to the community in return. Speaker 2 reads the “mean email” into the record—the attack Saavedra promised in his emails—but fumbles it. What she manages to read isn’t even that bad. Speakers 2 and 3 leave shortly after their comments, before the Tamiscal/San Andreas discussion begins. They weren’t here for the students.

Speakers 4-6 return to the topic at hand and offer passionate defenses of keeping the schools separate. One asks the board to talk to students before deciding. Roenisch reflexively interjects her irrelevant rebuttal. Speaker 6 nails it: “We have also watched as legitimate parent concerns were re-framed publicly as attacks on the board.”

The Train Wreck (36 minutes):

The next speaker is the woman Saavedra has been abusing via email. She’s here defending Tamiscal and San Andreas. “I’m not under the illusion that you guys are going to make the right choice tonight. You don’t care about maintaining the rules of civility either. If you [audience] weren’t at the November meeting, watch the video to see how this board treats students, teachers and parents. It was deplorable.”

Then: “Every accusation you lob at me about civility is an admission of your own lack of it.” She reads Saavedra’s email into the record: “Fuck off you stupid old crone, telling me that I should be quote butt hurt about it.”

38:28 – Roenisch: “Immona introduce a document.” She’s making good on the threat to publicly expose the “mean email.”

38:40 – Saavedra: “I was only responding to your hateful emails….I could hardly believe an adult would write something like that.”

He abuses community members and then can’t believe people are abusive back. His tone shifts from whining to aggressive and domineering.

Chaos. Cynthia and Kevin work in a toxic ballet of disdain, introducing documents about how mean this woman was to them, certain everyone will see how justified their abuse is.

38:55 – Roenisch: “I’m going to submit the letter where you called me a petty bitch and you said I must have suffered some trauma…it was quite well known that my husband committed suicide when my children were six and nine.”

39:14 – The woman responds: “No, I had no idea!”

Silence. Are we talking about students and learning or settling a grudge match between trustees who can dish it out but can’t take it?

39:46 Ida Times-Green: “Chairlady, can we go back to hearing from the public?”

Kevin: “NO! They got their time and NOW I GET MY TIME!!!”

What?

All these parents and students who care about their schools, and two out-of-control trustees turn it into the world’s worst spectacle of selfish insanity.

40:33 – A Tamiscal parent brings us back to the subject.

The next twenty minutes are people speaking passionately about the schools. It’s not clear Cynthia or Kevin are paying attention.

Forty minutes later, Emily Ulhorn shows what being a trustee should look like. (1:23:01) “I just want to start by saying thank you to everyone who has sent us letters, particularly families that have shared their personal stories about what Tamiscal and San Andreas have meant.” She speaks eloquently about the need for a rigorous co-location plan for the schools, asks smart questions, demonstrates preparation. She met with San Andreas staff on Friday. Cynthia and Kevin wake up a little and try to follow her lead—a bit late and obvious when you watch it. Hopefully our community can elect more trustees like Emily in November.

Twenty minutes later, Saavedra attacks Ida Times-Green. (1:46:23) When Ida questions the finances, Saavedra’s mocking tone is so offensive and disdainful I’m surprised he’s still allowed on the board. Every speaker who says something the three don’t like gets this treatment - rebutted immediately, with no hint these trustees are actually listening.

The co-location passed 4-1. In many ways it seems like the only option the district has. But for those of us watching in the audience the only thing we know for sure is that there is nothing we can trust about the job Saavedra and Roenisch are doing. If this is how they behave in public, how are they behaving behind closed doors?

At the December 9th TUHSD School Board Meeting we had the annual “Choose the president for the next year” event and it was as dysfunctional and uninspiring as we’ve come to expect.

Generally, school boards rotate the position of president each year allowing all elected trustees the opportunity to share in leadership and governance. We’ve seen this in almost all of the other boards of trustees, but not the Tam District School Board.

No, Cynthia Roenisch’s need for control appears matched only by her refusal to engage in any meaningful self-reflection. Alongside Kevin Saavedra and Jenny Holden, she has shown little regard for the concerns of everyday Southern Marin residents. Holden has positioned herself as a vocal opponent of ethnic studies and has pushed policies that critics say appear to restrict educational access for historically underserved students. Roenisch, meanwhile, continues what many critics describe as a deeply personal campaign to undermine the district. Dozens of teachers and parents have reached out to me with concerns about how Cynthia Roenisch is treating TUHSD staff.

And then there’s Kevin. We’ll examine his record more closely next week, but his email exchanges with constituents and consistent opposition to equity initiatives speak volumes. But more on Kevin next week.

What I want to highlight is a short clip from the board meeting, where Jenny, Kevin, Cynthia and, unexpectedly, Ida, vote to install Cynthia as board president for a second consecutive term, effectively crowning her queen of the Tam District once again.

What I want you to see is how after Jenny predictably defers to Cynthia, Emily Uhlhorn tries for just a tiny sliver of sanity.

Note: There is no sound on the video.

You can see the interaction at the 41minute mark on this video.

Emily Uhlhorn: “Um, can I just uh have a comment or kind of a question um that Cynthia, if you serve um again as president, I would like to ask if you would be willing to watch some past board meetings where people have um offered opinions that you didn’t agree with and reflect on your reactions um and kind of have a reflection about whether that is the best modeling that you can do for our students.”

Cynthia Roenisch: “Um thank you for your comments. Uh, I was at the board meetings. I heard the comments. I had my reactions. Those stand.”

In the handful of days since this meeting I’ve had more than 30 people reach out to me about this clip. It’s just stunning honestly.

Without hesitation Cynthia refuses to even consider her actions. Not even for a moment. Her intentions are so strong, her ideology so profoundly tied to her core that she can’t, even for a second, pretend to reflect on her behavior and consider chances to improve.

People of the Tam District: you have a school board member who operates without the capacity for self-doubt. Someone who does not believe she has ever been wrong, has anything left to learn, or might benefit from listening to the professionals she oversees. Disagreement is treated as defiance. Expertise is treated as a threat. This is not leadership, it is certainty hardened into contempt.

This governing style doesn’t build schools; it erodes them. It thrives on control, punishment, and public scolding, then feigns confusion when the system falters. After years of antagonizing educators and contributing to instability in the district, they point to CAASPP scores and ask why nothing is improving - as if morale, trust, and stability are irrelevant to learning.

The resemblance to Nurse Ratched is uncomfortable and apt: calm authority, procedural cruelty, and an unshakable belief that the harm being inflicted is actually care. Systems governed this way don’t thrive. They struggle, and even the best teachers and strongest communities can be undermined by one public servant with an axe to grind.

This is Cynthia’s Nurse Ratched moment. Putting down her microphone and scoffing at students, staff and community members she just says:

“I’m doing this for your own good.”

Cynthia Roenisch is one of the most troubling school board trustees I’ve seen in more than 30 years of watching public education in Marin County. Petty, self-interested, and profoundly ineffective, Roenisch embodies a style of leadership that’s more about performance than purpose. Where Marin County needs a thoughtful public servant, we’ve been stuck with a petty, grievance-fueled micromanager cosplaying as a trustee, who thinks self-promotion is a substitute for competence.

Her constant refrain at board meetings is as transparent as it is bizarre: Tam District teachers are failing, and the teachers of Alameda, where she works, are the gold standard. Again and again, she elevates herself as an Alameda educator while publicly undermining the very teachers she was elected to support.

You notice she never singles out any of her Alameda colleagues, who I must assume are good teachers. Instead she uses them as a metaphoric cudgel with which she likes to bash people in the Tam District.

The only person Cynthia Roenisch ever singles out for excellence is…herself.

Roenisch needs you to believe she’s the best teacher in California. She brings it up constantly: how many students ask her for letters of recommendation, how often she’s praised, how superior her methods are. She seems to believe that her alleged personal success in Alameda is enough to discredit the entire Tam District staff.

We must admit that generally, when someone goes out of their way to tell you how successful they are, it’s often to distract from how deeply they’ve failed. And while I have no information on how Cynthia Roenisch performs as a teacher in Alameda, I have looked at how she interacts with students at Tam District Board meetings. Let’s see how her behavior compares to her claims of being such an in-demand educator.

What Happened on October 14th?

When you watch Cynthia Roenisch interact with the student trustees at the October 14th Board Meeting, you start to wonder if she is as great at education as she claims. Her superiority complex looks more like insecurity. And her posture - dismissive, evasive, patronizing - betrays a hostility to student voices that should concern every parent in this district.

Click here for the entire Tam District October 14th Board Meeting Video.

(The CAASP discussion starts at the 36 minute mark and it is worth watching through.)

On October 14, 2025, the agenda turned to CAASPP scores which is the state’s standardized test used to evaluate school performance. The test is deeply flawed. It’s high-stakes for schools but essentially meaningless for students, and it does not do as much as some people claim to measure actual learning. In the Tam District participation is low, and many students simply opt out.

This nuance is lost on Roenisch. She insists the scores are low because Tam District teachers and administrators are incompetent. She contrasts them with her colleagues in Alameda, whom she holds up as paragons of excellence.

One student trustee poses a reasonable question (around the 47 min mark): Are the CAASPP scores skewed by students opting out? Watch closely — Cynthia Roenisch’s physical reaction speaks volumes. A student’s simple question threatens her agenda, and her body language makes that clear.

(Note: No volume on the video. Just watch her physical response.)

The answer, of course, is yes — when students opt out, it absolutely skews the data. But here’s the real takeaway: Cynthia Roenisch isn’t interested in hearing from students unless they’re echoing her agenda. Watch this closer look at how she reacts when a student dares to offer a perspective that challenges her narrative.

Another student trustee suggests that many students don’t understand the test’s purpose and simply don’t take it seriously. These are valid, experience-based insights, exactly what student trustees are there to provide.

Roenisch doesn’t want to hear it. She ignores them, averts her eyes, gestures impatiently, and finally cuts them off. “No no no,” she says at the 47 min mark. “We need to hear from Trustees first.”

Of course, her allies, Jenny Holden and Kevin Saavedra, join in. Together, they drive the conversation back to their preferred message: Tam teachers are the problem. Their tone is prosecutorial. They wield CAASPP scores like weapons. Their disdain for staff and families is not subtle — it’s the centerpiece of their agenda.

Emily Uhlhorn and Ida Times-Green stand out as the only sources of sensibility on this failing board.

A lecture built on ignorance.

Skipping ahead to the 55 minute mark on the video you can watch Cynthia’s 8 minute rant on CAASP scores.

Roenisch’s rambling monologue was sloppy, shallow, and riddled with bad data, false equivalencies, and a fundamental ignorance of how CAASPP actually works. Her rant is pedagogically uninformed, data-illiterate, methodologically flawed, logically inconsistent, and professionally inappropriate for a trustee addressing students and teachers in public.

And not once does she stop to consider the obvious: that maybe the real problem is the dysfunction at the top, that Trustee-level leadership might actually be making things worse for students.

She goes on and on, talking about herself, her greatness, how many students ask her for recommendation letters. It feels endless. And when it finally does end, the student trustees finally get their turn to speak.

And just watch Cynthia’s behavior when the student trustees get their turn (at the 1:06 mark). She doesn’t look at them while they talk. She makes dismissive gestures and shows her lack of respect for their words and experiences.

(The video has no sound. Watch as everyone else at the table pays attention to the student speaking while Cynthia shows she is not paying attention and even engages Superintendent Goode.)

(Another instance of Roenisch literally unable to listen to the students talk. Look at the frustration she shows when students are talking)

Not Good for the Tam District

There are endless examples — not just in this board meeting, but in every board meeting of Cynthia physically showing her disdain and disgust for administrators, teachers and staff.

And now we see she doesn’t really seem to be engaged with the kids either. Watch the meeting for yourself, or any other meeting for that matter, and notice how Cynthia Roenisch seems to be coming out of her skin every time she’s forced to listen to a student talk.

The picture that emerges isn’t one of thoughtful leadership, it’s one of a trustee consumed by a personal grudge. We get a picture of a teacher who doesn’t listen to kids. We get a picture of a trustee that can’t stand the people who work in the district. And we get the picture of an extremely dysfunctional Board President, overseeing unpopular, misguided and radical leadership among a slim majority of Trustees of the Tam District.

There’s a right-wing faction clawing at Marin politics, hiding in plain sight. They call themselves CO$T — the Coalition of Sensible Taxpayers. Don’t be fooled by the name. This rightwing group has one mission: to starve our public schools and weaken our community.

At the center of it all is Mimi Willard. She founded CO$T. She runs it. She is its mouthpiece and attack dog. She doesn’t advertise her politics in Marin, where open MAGA allegiance would get you laughed out of the room. Instead, she dresses her politics in the language of “taxpayer advocacy” and “nonpartisanship.” But make no mistake: this is the same right-wing agenda Marin voters crush every election.

Look at the numbers. Republicans in Marin don’t stand a chance. Chris Coulombe — a self-styled libertarian who pitched himself as a political outsider — went up against Rep. Jared Huffman for Congress and got crushed, 80–20. Andy Podshadly, longtime Republican and owner of Trek Winery in Novato, tried his hand at the State Assembly and fared no better against Damon Connolly, losing 80–20. In Marin, it doesn’t matter if you come dressed up as a maverick outsider or a small-business conservative — four out of five voters slam the door on the right wing every time.

So what do they do when they can’t win at the ballot box? They go after the softest target they can find: our schools.

Why schools? Because schools can’t fight back. Schools are open. Schools are nurturing. Schools have no choice but to accept everyone — and that makes them vulnerable to attacks from people who see compassion as weakness.

And attack they do. Whenever a school bond or parcel tax comes up for a vote, CO$T shows up with scare tactics, what many call disinformation, and dark warnings about runaway spending. They know the truth: even a few hundred “no” votes can sink a measure that requires two-thirds to pass. And when schools lose, the damage is immediate — bigger class sizes, fewer teachers, programs gutted.

Here’s the bitter irony: even if you didn’t care about kids or education, supporting schools still protects your own wallet. Every dollar invested in schools pays back as much as twenty dollars in property values. A $1,000 parcel tax can mean $20,000 in added home equity. That’s not ideology — that’s math. Yet Willard and CO$T fight these measures again and again, cutting off their nose to spite our face. It seems that they are so desperate to bring DOGE to Marin County they don’t care who they hurt.

This isn’t fiscal prudence. It’s sabotage. By weakening our schools, CO$T isn’t just saving a few bucks in taxes — they’re paving the way for the very brand of politics Marin has rejected for decades. Undermine public education, erode trust in institutions, hollow out the middle class, and suddenly the ground shifts beneath our feet. Many people are saying that Mimi Willard has a plan to turn Marin County into Mississippi.

And the proof is in the pudding:

• Ross Valley School District’s Measure E (May 2025) — a parcel tax to fund teachers and programs. It earned 62.5% yes, but failed because it needed two-thirds. CO$T led the opposition. Result: cuts to programs and staff.
  

• Tamalpais Union High School District’s Measure A (March 2024) — a $517 million bond to repair aging schools and modernize classrooms. It got 53.8% yes, short of the 55% needed. CO$T campaigned hard against it. Result: deferred maintenance, crowded classrooms, and students paying the price.
  

Twice in two years, CO$T was able to peel off just enough voters to cripple school funding. Twice in two years, right wingers beat our kids.

So let’s call this what it is: an assault on our kids, our teachers, our neighborhoods, and our future. And the question we all need to answer is simple: how much longer are we going to let Mimi Willard and CO$T get away with it?

What will you do when you hear about the next school that CO$T is attacking?

If you have any information about rightwingers in Marin County, or any updates to any of my stories, please email me at rosadanton@proton.me

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Any supremacist concept — whether it’s based on your skin color, ideology, religion, national origin, or socioeconomic status — is corrosive and cancerous to our common society. When someone believes a particular group, or they themselves, are inherently superior, it permits them to dismiss and denigrate others. However well-intentioned they claim to be, their supremacist beliefs will inevitably lead to harm.

Supremacists resist new facts. Their worldview is fragile, built on a shaky sense of superiority. Because that superiority is unearned and myth-based, the supremacist becomes a profoundly destructive force in any society.

For the supremacist, there is no embarrassment too low, no logic too absurd, no harm too great. Every critic is an enemy to be crushed, and every enabler becomes a righteous defender of the cause. They will say or do anything to preserve the fiction of their own superiority.

There are moments when public officials embody this mindset — rigid, self-justifying, and reckless. Sometimes it’s rooted in preexisting supremacist beliefs; sometimes it emerges after gaining power. At the July 2 board meeting many saw such wretched supremacist concepts on display. As I watched that meeting, I saw shock and dismay on the faces around me. But I came prepared, fully expecting the trustees to drop the mask and reveal themselves as the ideologues we mistakenly entrusted with our schools.

On July 2nd we saw the final act in the drama that has dragged out over the past six weeks. Let’s start with a quick recap: In fall 2024, Paul Austin and Tenisha Tate were brought in to help address the decades-long struggle of Tamalpais High School to adequately support its Black students. Like all consultants, they were contracted for a year — and according to administrators, teachers, parents, students, and two board members (Emily Uhlhorn and Ida Green) they did excellent work. But sometime in March 2025, the other three school board members — Jennifer Holden, Kevin Saavedra, and Cynthia Roenisch — decided they didn’t want those contracts renewed.

At first, they tried to quietly let the contracts die, with Cynthia appearing to use her position as board president to keep the topic off the agenda. But the community caught on. Outrage grew, and the three were forced to hold a public meeting on the contracts. That June 3rd meeting was packed with community members begging for the contracts to be renewed. But the three trustees essentially argued that Paul and Tenisha weren’t worth the money.

The public was outraged. Massive teacher-led demonstrations followed, and two more standing-room-only board meetings showed overwhelming community support for Paul and Tenisha’s work. The board still refused to reconsider. That’s when a new group The Friends of Tam District stepped in — offering to fund the contracts privately. A special board meeting was called on July 2nd to discuss whether the board would allow Paul and Tenisha to return if the district wasn’t footing the bill.

That was the stated premise. What followed instead was something between a trainwreck and a confessional.

If you’ve got the time, I urge you to watch the meeting in its entireity because it is the clearest picture we have of who we are dealing with. The first 30 minutes of the meeting were public comment — more than two dozen community members speaking with urgency, restraint, and clarity in 60-second bursts. Then came the board's turn and this is where the real theater begins.

1. Kevin Saavedra goes first. His main takeaways? He doesn't care what anyone thinks. He thinks Paul and Tenisha are a waste. He thinks helping Black kids is racist. He channels Donald Trump and Elon Musk. He even invokes his Mexican heritage to argue he can’t be racist — the Candace Owens defense. But the highlight is when the crowd starts jeering, and Saavedra responds with a sing-song delivery of his speech, condescending and smug, like a man auditioning for the villain role in a high school play.

2. Then, at 36 minutes, Jennifer Holden steps into the spotlight. Some still foolishly hoped she might rise to the moment. But if you knew anything about her politics or ideological ties, you weren’t surprised. What followed was a 25-minute ramble that required a recess because it was so offensive the audience couldn't stomach it. You can watch it or read the full text she proudly sent to supporters — either way, it's a masterclass in deflection, arrogance and ideological gibberish.

3. She opens by telling a room full of concerned citizens that, actually, lots of people secretly agree with her. Ah yes, the classic “silent majority” defense — where unnamed supporters allegedly whisper their approval in hushed tones, too afraid to speak up because... accountability exists? Holden would have us believe there's a legion of morally courageous allies out there, all tragically cloaked in anonymity, trembling at the thought of being mistaken for racists while parroting racist talking points.

4. Then comes the obligatory “I can’t be racist” section. She employs the classic “I have a Black friend” trope. But worse. She doesn’t even claim to have a Black friend. Instead, she says she grew up around diversity, so... case closed. Watching her deliver this with a straight face, it was hard not to laugh.

5. “You don’t get to call me racist.” My personal favorite line in the early part of this long, poorly constructed speech. This is the favorite slogan of the wrongdoer. Tone policing those you are offending and oppressing takes a particular sort of prejudice and disregard for people who don’t look or think like you. I think this should be her next campaign slogan.

6. Jenny says she’s the only one talking straight! (39:38) Here she accuses the community members holding her accountable of “not engaging on the merits of the topic at hand.” The implication is that she’s the only one speaking coherently; everyone else, from her warped view, isn’t making real arguments. She must have plugged her ears to all the efforts just 20 minutes ago on this same video! The idea that the community members who are fighting on behalf of the Black kids in our district aren’t engaging on the merits of the topic is so offensive that you must be getting the concept of Jennifer Holden’s ideology by now.

7. The crowd, understandably, loses patience. Cynthia Roenisch calls a recess. “I don’t know how she can do it,” a community member told me at the recess. “I don’t know how she can pretend like we aren’t saying anything, that we don’t mean anything? How can she do it?”

8. Holden returns, undeterred. At 45:35 she dredges up a few quotes and presents them as proof that others are the real racists. One quote — about teaching students how to email — is twisted into a slanderous caricature of the outraged parents. The original point was about equitable instruction. Holden distorts it and weaponizes it for outrage. It appears she is determined to use her speaking time to attack people who don’t look like her or think like her.

9. The Musk/Trump defense revisited. (46:03) Borrowing a page from Saavedra she then rolls out the classic right-wing dodge: It’s racist to help Black students more. In her version, equity is unfair because it acknowledges history. “I believe in you!” she says, while pulling support away. “You’re strong!” she cheers, as she pulls the rug out from under them. “Just because of Chattel Slavery and Black Codes and Jim Crow and Redlining and Convict Leasing and Lynching and COINTELPRO and Mass Incarceration and Segregation — that doesn’t mean you’re not strong enough to do this on your own!” Sitting in the crowd I physically winced when she went down this road.

10. Around 47:18 she enters the “data” phase. Holden says she’s being unfairly criticized for scrutinizing the numbers. The crowd laughed at that one. It appears that no one is mad she’s looking at data — they’re mad she’s only doing it when it hurts Black students. “First, we just wish she understood data,” one parent told me. “But second and more importantly we wish she would scrutinize the data on the other consultants that she greenlights. She didn’t ask a single question about some of the contracts she voted yes on, but those contracts didn’t help Black kids.”

11. From 48:06 to about 55:10 she goes on a tortured tour of data. I can’t really respond to this diatribe because she hasn’t published her findings. What I can say is that when I listened to her I got a real Dunning-Kruger vibe. You get the idea that she doesn’t understand data analysis and she’s simultaneously convinced herself that she knows the data better than everyone else. I urge the community to demand that she publish her data analytics. I would love to review them, but it’s impossible to follow her illogic just based on what she read out loud.

12. Then comes her big conclusion: “They only helped one kid.” At 55:38 is the rotted conclusion of this ‘data investigation.’ “If correct, that means our two consultants, who were paid $250,000 for part-time work, helped one student remediate a DF or I.” What’s amazing to me here is not just how bad she is with numbers — presumably I need to see her show her math to really know — but that she has used the numbers to convince herself that Tenisha and Paul only helped one kid. She had to think back about all the teachers protesting, all those parents in the room, all those students who came and spoke to the board, and she had to say “They’re all full of it! I’m the only one who can know the truth about this, and the truth is they only helped one kid!!”

13. (Side note: After the display I spoke with a teacher who told me, to the best of her knowledge, Jennifer Holden still has not talked to any of the teachers who protested her actions. Important to keep in mind.)

14. At 57:00 she pivots to accusing Paul and Tenisha of orchestrating a scam to get hired. The reality — that Paul and Tenisha were invited in, hired for their deep expertise, and publicly praised across the district — doesn’t align with Holden’s narrative. So she recasts them as grifters and crowns herself the whistleblowing savior. Again and again, she belittles their work as mere “part-time,” dripping with condescension, and relentlessly questions their motives, integrity, and value. It’s impossible to ignore the racial double standard — would she dare drag white consultants through the mud like this?

15. By 1:01:57, she notes the contracts were one-year terms — true, but misleading. Most consulting contracts are annual, and often renewed without controversy. The board could have done the same.

16. Then she attacks their pay — using fuzzy math and claiming Tenisha was among the district’s top earners. (1:03:46) Either Holden can’t do basic math, or she’s banking on the public not doing theirs. Her attempt to compare consultant pay to district employee salaries isn’t just misleading — it reveals either a willful ignorance of how districts operate or a deliberate attempt to deceive. Consultants are always paid differently, and she knows it. Worse still, her numbers are flat-out wrong: Tenisha wouldn’t crack the top 20 highest-paid district employees, much less the top five as Holden falsely claims. And where, exactly, is her outrage over the dozens of other consultants quietly making equal or greater sums? Nowhere — because this was never about fiscal responsibility. It was about targeting these two people.

17. She ends with a final flourish: “I’m open to dialogue.” Sure — as long as you already agree with her. For everyone else? The door is firmly shut. “I don’t think she’s spoken to a single one of us,” a parent from Friends of Tam District told me before the meeting. “I don’t think she ever will. That’s why they hold these meetings — we get one minute to speak, and then they unload on us with no accountability.” Looking back at my notes, I realized just how dead-on that parent was. Holden’s idea of dialogue is a monologue with a captive audience.

18. “I may be hurting you, but it’s only because I believe in you.” (1:08:05) At the end of her speech Holden delivered a syrupy monologue to the students — awkward, condescending, and tone-deaf. It was the cringeworthy cherry on top of a speech that had long since gone off the rails.

Her performance was so bad that I honestly didn’t think it was real at first. Her speech was such an obvious charicature of bad leadership and bad faith public policy that when I got home from the meeting that night to write about it, all I could think was that she’s a walking, talking SNL skit.

The rest of the meeting follows the predictable trajectory. From there, Roenisch takes the mic (1:09:41–1:14:17) to nod along with Holden and Saavedra, parroting their talking points and vaguely lashing out at Tam High staff over Tier 2 interventions — a subject she clearly doesn’t grasp but is eager to weaponize anyway.

Ida and Emily respond next, doing their best to reason with an immovable majority powered not by evidence but by ideology. If you have time, their remarks are worth watching. Ida’s comments about sharing the lived experience are hard to ignore and Emily’s masterful incisions into the illogical and ill-formed arguments of the board majority are brilliant and punishing.

At around 1:41:18, Cynthia briefly floats the idea of private funding — only for Holden, Saavedra, and Roenisch to immediately shut it down, as if the suggestion itself were offensive.

By the end, the picture is clear: the community was lured into yet another performance, another ritual humiliation, by three board members that have made their priorities obvious — and the well-being of Black students isn’t one of them.

July 2nd was supposed to be a discussion about funding. It became something much darker — a window into the ideology now running parts of our district. Let’s hope people were paying attention.

This was the final nail in the coffin for bringing Tenisha Tate and Paul Austin back to lead BSST in the fall. For the hundreds fighting to protect Black students, it was a gut punch — the crushing end to months of resistance. The three board members weren’t moved. They didn’t listen. They didn’t care. The protests, the testimonies, the raw emotion from teachers, students, and parents — none of it mattered. They came armed with their ideology, and it gave them all the certainty they needed to ignore everyone else. Nothing — no fact, no plea, no truth — was ever going to change that.

What unfolded at today’s board meeting made one thing brutally clear: whatever hope remained that this board majority might course-correct has now evaporated. Any illusion that one of them — Cynthia Roenisch, Kevin Saavedra, or Jennifer Holden — might break ranks and do the right thing has been shattered. What we’re witnessing isn’t a misunderstanding or a temporary lapse in judgment. It’s deliberate. And the damage they’re doing is going to take a long time to undo.

At the same time, there were moments during the meeting that were almost surreal in their absurdity. The shifting explanations, the deflections, the contradictions — they’re hard to keep up with. The key issue on the table was straightforward: If Paul Austin and Tenisha Tate were let go for financial reasons, then wouldn’t independent funding from Friends of Tam District solve the problem?

The answer from Roenisch, Saavedra, and Holden was essentially: “No.” Each member gave a different rationale — none of them consistent. Holden rejected the data outright, without evidence. Saavedra went so far as to question whether focusing on Black students was appropriate at all. Roenisch said little to nothing. If you were hoping for leadership rooted in reason, equity, or even basic consistency — today made clear that we’re not going to get it.

It was a display both telling and embarrassing. I’ll put together a full recap soon, but tonight, one thing stands out: this board majority no longer feels the need to justify their actions coherently. This evening all I can think about is how absurd the whole thing was — how small and unserious these three have become. When I sat down to describe it, I realized it sounded like a sketch from Saturday Night Live. So that’s how I decided to write it.

Disclaimer: This is satire, in that this isn’t exactly how things happened. But…

Open on the school board meeting. A large group has gathered, hopeful that the trustees might finally do the right thing.

The crowd murmurs as only three of the normal five board members come into the room. Cynthia Roenisch, Kevin Saavedra, and Jenny Holden look angry as they come in and take their seats.

“You may speak,” Cynthia says, gesturing to the crowd.

“Don’t hurt our Black kids!” the crowd pleads.

“Enough!” she shouts. “That is enough out of you.” Solemnly, she nods to her right, and Kevin begins to speak.

“Telling us not to hurt Black kids is racist,” he says.

“What?” the crowd asks.

“Silence!” Cynthia shouts. She bangs the table with a tiny little hammer. Kevin is staring at the crowd with his meanest face. His thin arms are shaking with rage.

“That’s right,” he continues. “You’re racist. Not me. You. You keep saying, ‘Oh, please, please, don’t hurt the Black kids.’ But what if we wanted to hurt some white kids?”

“We aren’t going to hurt white kids, are we?” Jenny shouts, surprised.

“No, of course not,” Cynthia assures her. “Just the Black kids.”

“Right,” Kevin says. “But these guys aren’t even worried that we might hurt white kids. That’s how I know they’re racist.”

“Do you have anything else to add?” Cynthia asks him.

“Yes, one other thing: Everyone who works at the district is a liar, and I hate them.”

“Okay, thank you, Kevin, so much for your bravery,” Cynthia gushes. “Jenny, it’s your turn.”

“Thank you,” Jenny says. “First of all, I have Black friends. Okay? That means I’m not racist. Got it? If you want, I can show you pictures of me with a Black person. I grew up in an area that had Black people. So I’m not racist…”

“Me neither,” Kevin says.

“Right. Me and Kevin are definitely not racist. Secondly, you guys are bad at math. Have you seen this data? It’s ridiculous. First you say that 10 Black kids were hurt badly last year. Ten? Why not ten thousand? Why not ten million? Why is the number so small? Because you’re lying, that’s why. And think about this: ten plus ten is twenty. Multiply twenty by twenty — that’s like 300 hundred. Where is the data showing that 300 Black kids should have gotten hurt at Tam? You don’t have it.”

“Because they’re racist,” Kevin says.

“Right, because YOU’RE the racists!” Jenny says, pointing at the crowd.

“All Lives Matter!” Kevin shouts.

“All Lives Matter,” Jenny joins in.

“All Lives Matter!” Cynthia agrees. “Anything else?” Cynthia asks.

“Yes,” Jenny says, starting to cry. “People have been really mean to me just because Black kids are getting hurt, and that’s wrong. You should never hurt someone that isn’t Black.”

“Shame on you!” Kevin shouts in his tiny voice.

“And you know what else? Everyone is secretly glad that we’re doing this,” Jenny continues, snapping out of her crying. “Everyone, except all of you in the crowd. I have, like, 50 friends who call me all the time and say, ‘Jenny, thank God you’re standing up against those racists! We don’t want anything that helps Black kids and we are definitely not racist!’ But they won’t tell anyone that they’re glad we’re doing this because they’re afraid. Afraid that they’ll be bullied just like I have been bullied. Nobody in this crowd is thinking about me, and that is the saddest part of all of this. You all should be ashamed of yourselves for thinking about me so little.”

“I’m sorry for everything you’ve been through, Jenny,” Cynthia says. “People like Jenny should not get their feelings hurt in our community! Come here, Jenny! Let’s hug.”

Jenny gets up from her seat, and she, Cynthia, and Kevin have a group hug behind their chairs. The hug goes on for several minutes.

“Is that the end of the board meeting?” the crowd asks.

“Yes,” Cynthia says, turning around. “I hope you’ve learned your lesson. No matter how much you care about Black kids, we care even more about not listening to anything you have to say.”

“But what about if we pay for it?” someone asks from the back.

“Pay for what?” Kevin pops his head out of the group hug. “Pay for my BMW?”

“No, what if we pay for a program that doesn’t hurt Black kids?” the group says. “We’ve started collecting money already…”

“We won’t accept your money. We hate your money,” Cynthia says.

“And you don’t even know how to count,” Jenny tells them. “You’ll say, oh here, here’s fifty thousand dollars — and then I’ll look, and all of a sudden it’s a trillion dollars. What am I going to do with a trillion dollars?”

“All Lives Matter,” Kevin says quietly.

“And remember,” Cynthia tells the crowd, gathering herself to leave, “when the Black kids get hurt in the fall, it’s all your fault.”

“All Lives Matter!” Kevin says, storming out of the room. “You better remember that next time you try to call me a racist!”

“Me too!” Jenny shouts and storms off. As she and Kevin walk away, you can hear her still talking: “Nobody in there is thinking about me! What about meeeeeeeee????”

“Get out of here, losers,” Cynthia says to the crowd. She bangs her little hammer on the table.

The End.

Note: When the video of the July 2nd special board meeting comes out, I implore you to watch it and see what we are dealing with here. You can find the links here. I personally believe they only called this meeting to try to make themselves look good, which, again, only makes me laugh. The meeting was brutal and painful and absurd.

This is a fictionalized satire of recent events. The statements and characters depicted are exaggerated for commentary.

On Tuesday June 24th, there was another packed house at the TUHSD school board meeting — and it looked almost identical to the Tuesday before. Dozens of concerned community members showed up and delivered powerful, thoughtful speeches in defense of Black students in the Tam District. And once again, three board members, led by Cynthia Roenisch, appeared to ignore what is now obviously a massive, organized contingent determined to fight back against what thousands of people are calling racist firings.

The class and composure of the crowd stood in stark contrast to the perceived dismissiveness of Roenisch, who many now see as failing to demonstrate the integrity and values expected of a public official. Meeting after meeting, she is given a free leadership lesson by community members who bring passion, justice, and intellectual rigor to the room. Her only response? Try to limit their speech — shuffling critics to the back of the line and then glaring blankly, refusing to listen to what they have to say.

Watching this board closely over the past few months, a troubling picture has emerged. Cynthia Roenisch, who sources tell me is a former district employee with a longstanding grudge, is seen by many as using her position to target educators and students in what one educator described as “the world’s smallest and pettiest revenge tour.” Kevin Saavedra, whom several district insiders describe as caustic and divisive, seems all too eager to follow behind Cynthia’s bulldozing — seeking his own strange form of retribution, though no one is quite sure what for.

In the past, this wrecking pair was safely in the minority. But everything changed with the election of Jennifer Holden — a candidate who ran as pro-teacher, pro-transparency, and community-focused. She held up her credentials as someone who listens and wants to do right by all kids. According to dozens of voters and observers, she has failed to uphold those promises. Observers and endorsers assumed she’d align with Emily Uhlhorn, the most capable and principled veteran member of the board, and Ida Green, a community leader new to the TUHSD board but with a long career of civic stewardship. Everyone expected the three of them to keep Cynthia and Kevin’s worst instincts in check.

But Holden surprised many by shifting allegiances — and quickly aligned herself very closely with Saavedra. Whatever it was he offered, it filled the void for her. Suddenly, the ghastly duo became a destructive trio and they went to work dismantling the very institution they were elected to serve.

In future columns we will discuss how their agenda is out of step with the community, but — like mean-spirited public officials everywhere — they’ve benefited from the fact that school board meetings are typically dull and sparsely attended. For over four months, they’ve gotten away with the quiet gutting of a school district. The lack of early pushback only emboldened them. District staff have been sounding alarms for months, and close observers have noted the trio’s total disregard for their responsibilities.

Now, however, they’ve gone too far. The racism that once simmered quietly has boiled over. From their intolerant words on ethnic studies to the obvious double standard in how they treat white versus Black students and staff, the pattern has become too visible to ignore. Feeling invincible, they made their boldest move yet: firing Paul Austin and Tenisha Tate, two very effective and respected Black educators supporting Black students at Tam High. They eliminated what many consider the most successful program serving Black students — and seemed to think it would feel good.

But they miscalculated. The silence they mistook for approval was actually just inattention. And that public? It’s wide awake now.

It’s almost funny, watching Roenisch try to invent new ways to ignore the outcry. Three packed board meetings in a row, and she’s still plugging her ears — figuratively, at least — and we can only assume she’s chanting “I’m the smartest, I’m the smartest, I’m the smartest” to drown out the roar of community outrage. But the voices calling for her to do the right thing just keep growing louder.

The biggest surprise in all this, though, has been Superintendent Tara Taupier. Sitting in a packed crowd at last week’s meeting, I was stunned that her final words on this debacle amounted to a soft, hollow defense of the board’s actions. Yes, she read her statement like a hostage blinking into a news camera. But later in the evening, when speaker after speaker praised her past integrity and tales of her bravey brought colleagues to tears, it was hard not to wonder: why, on an issue so morally clear, did she choose to go out with a whimper of white privilege rather than a principled bang?

For someone who spent years championing anti-racist leadership, her final act has been interpreted by many as enabling the very forces she once promised to stand against — working hard to hand them one last assist as she exits the stage. Several people I spoke with at the board meeting are simply shocked by her lack of courage and would only shake their head when I asked them about it.

It is hard to believe she would end a long career in education on such an embarassingly low note. Perhaps there is more dirty politics to this story than most had assumed…

In the wake of the Tamalpais Union High School District’s deeply controversial decision to terminate contracts supporting Black student success, the Marin Independent Journal did what it’s become increasingly known for: publishing a reactionary defense that ignored racial context, community outrage, and educational equity. And once again, it came from Dick Spotswood.

Spotswood, a longtime columnist and self-described “militant centrist,” has built a brand on false balance — portraying himself as neutral while consistently echoing the perspectives of conservative power holders. His June 21 column is a case study in that strategy, applauding TUHSD trustees for cutting ties with Paul Austin and Tenisha Tate, two consultants widely praised for their work with Black students at Tam High.

The argument? Budget discipline.
The evidence? Largely absent.
The context? Omitted entirely.

Spotswood makes no mention of the overwhelming public outcry against the board’s decision. He ignores testimony from dozens of educators, parents, and students who described the terminations as destructive and racially charged. He fails to explain why — of all district contracts — only those tied to racial equity were singled out for elimination.

Instead, he parrots talking points from trustees Cynthia Roenisch, Jennifer Holden, and Kevin Saavedra — including the dubious claim that the board was “rushed” into decisions last August. What he doesn’t mention is that the current board had an entire year to develop alternatives but chose not to. The last-minute vote in June wasn’t the product of haste — it was a calculated maneuver. And Spotswood is helping launder it into legitimacy.

This isn’t just lazy journalism — it’s advocacy masquerading as commentary. And it fits a disturbing pattern.

Under Alden Global Capital, the hedge fund that owns the Marin IJ, the paper has become a shadow of its former self. Investigative reporting has been gutted. Local accountability coverage has all but vanished. And right leaning ideologues like Spotswood have filled the vacuum — using the editorial page to prop up institutional power while downplaying, or outright ignoring, issues of race, equity, and justice.

Spotswood is dependable in one regard: when power needs a loyal scribe to spin a narrative, he shows up. Sometimes he’s deployed to legitimize local Republicans. Sometimes he’s used to float racially coded arguments that others don’t want to say out loud. Sometimes he’s trotted out when the community seems poised to make the right call on housing or education. And in this case, he’s doing cleanup duty for Roenisch, Saavedra, and Holden — the trio responsible for dismantling one of the only programs in the Tam District with a proven track record of supporting Black student success.

Spotswood steps up and delivers his usual: an awkward bunt of a column, half-baked and surface-level, designed to pacify the casual reader and confuse the undecided.

And that’s exactly who this kind of commentary targets — the disengaged voter, the headline skimmer, the person just tuning in. If you haven’t been following how three ideologically driven trustees fired two of Marin’s most impactful Black educators, you might fall for Spotswood’s framing and his selectively crafted distortions.

But Marin has changed. The packed board meetings, the “No Kings” rally, the outrage from students and teachers, and the rising wave of community resistance show that people are watching — and they’re no longer willing to accept this kind of propaganda. Not from the trustees. And not from their stenographers in print.

It’s time we stop letting hedge-fund-owned outlets and their house columnists define what this community believes. If Spotswood wants to speak for the status quo, let him — but we don’t have to pretend he speaks for Marin.

We might start by asking ourselves: why are we still paying for a newspaper that keeps spitting in our face?

On the night of June 17, outrage once again filled the boardroom of the Tamalpais Union High School District. Nearly 100 parents, students, and staff returned to demand the reinstatement of Paul Austin and Tenisha Tate, two Black educators whose firings have ignited one of the most intense community responses in recent district history.

Before the meeting began, a crowd gathered outside the building — Tam High teachers and parents united in condemning what many have described as a direct attack on Black staff and students. Inside, tensions mounted quickly, with Trustee Cynthia Roenisch taking center stage — not with transparency, but with obstruction.

Roenisch opened the meeting with a 25-minute rambling monologue, framed as a rebuttal to community criticism. The speech veered between incoherence and provable falsehoods. At one point, Roenisch repeated a claim she has made in multiple media outlets: that the firing of Austin and Tate amounted to a mere 25% reduction in the Black Student Support Team (BSST) staff. That figure, according to teachers and official board materials, is demonstrably false.

“There are only three people in the BSST,” one Tam High teacher told this publication. “Paul, Tenisha, and Lorenzo. You remove two, that’s not 25% no matter how you try to lie about it.”

During the meeting, Trustee Emily Uhlhorn expertly corrected Roenisch’s claim, citing slides from previous board presentations that identify the BSST staff solely as Paul Austin, Tenisha Tate, and paraeducator Lorenzo Bynum. The additional staff Roenisch includes in her 25% calculation — such as special education aides and an assistant principal — are not part of the dedicated BSST team, and have full-time roles elsewhere on campus.

“I don’t know why she’s lying about this,” one parent said bluntly. “It’s not a math error. It’s a deliberate attempt to mislead the public.”

Another major flashpoint came when Roenisch once again mischaracterized the nature of the services provided by Austin and Tate, referring to their work as “Tier 1” supports — a designation used for universal strategies offered to all students in the general education classroom. But as multiple educators at Tam High made clear, this is a fundamental distortion. Austin and Tate led culturally responsive, trauma-informed, and community-rooted interventions designed specifically for Black students confronting systemic academic and social barriers. Their work included mentoring, crisis response, community engagement, and individualized academic support — hallmarks of Tier 3 interventions, which are highly targeted, intensive, and provided outside the scope of regular classroom instruction.

This distinction is not semantic — it carries real implications. Tier 3 supports are governed by different regulations, staffing models, and accountability structures than Tier 1 services. Mislabeling them as universal allows Roenisch to falsely argue that what Austin and Tate offered was redundant or replaceable by classroom teachers — a claim that not only minimizes the specialized nature of their work but also conveniently erases the urgent needs of the students they served.

“At first I thought she just didn’t understand the terminology,” a Tam High staff member said. “But she’s repeated the same nonsense too many times. She knows what Tier 1 means. She’s just lying.”

As public comment began, it became clear that Roenisch was attempting to limit pro-BSST voices. Several attendees noted that she prioritized speakers unrelated to the issue and appeared to reshuffle the speaking order to prevent critics from gaining traction. Her dismissive posture — visibly scoffing, shaking her head, and displaying what many described as contempt — only added fuel to the fire.

The room eventually erupted. Chants of “Vote Them Out” and “Recall Now” rang through the chamber as dozens of community members stood and walked out, effectively halting the meeting for several minutes.

“They don’t want to hear us,” one parent said. “They don’t want to acknowledge what they’ve done, and they’re willing to dismantle programs that work for our kids just to prove they don’t have to listen. That’s not leadership — that’s racism with a side of insanity.”

The board majority — particularly Roenisch and Trustee Kevin Saavedra — have yet to provide a consistent, evidence-based explanation for the firings. As community frustration deepens and the two trustees remain unresponsive, calls for recall are no longer whispers. They’re becoming demands.

The battle over equity in Marin’s Tamalpais Union High School District escalated this week as Marin County Superintendent of Schools John Carroll publicly challenged the TUHSD board's decision to terminate two consultants working to support Black student success at Tam High, as reported in the Marin Independent Journal. In response, trustees Cynthia Roenisch and Kevin Saavedra lashed out — tripling down on what many community members have called a racially motivated attack on Black educators and students.

Carroll stepped in after the board majority abruptly voted to end contracts for consultants Tenisha Tate and Paul Austin — both widely praised for their work narrowing the achievement gap for Black students in Marin. Carroll urged the board to reconsider, citing the consultants' clear impact and warning of serious disruptions to programs aimed at closing persistent racial disparities in academic outcomes.

Carroll further offered to personally review the contracts and explore ways to restore services, signaling his belief that the dismissals were not only damaging but fundamentally misguided.

In response, Roenisch issued a dismissive email attacking Carroll’s intervention. “Mr. Carroll has little information regarding these services and is simply repeating talking points from Mr. Austin and Ms. Tate-Austin and their agents who have been heavily lobbying the board and are dissatisfied with the board’s June 3 decision,” she wrote.

Roenisch’s defense follows a now-familiar pattern: dismissing critics as misinformed while failing to present any concrete evidence to justify the firings. Her explanations for the dismissals have shifted repeatedly, fueling growing skepticism about her credibility and motives. She has also shown an apparent unwillingness to acknowledge the widespread community outrage, instead characterizing those advocating for Paul Austin and Tenisha Tate as their "agents" — a framing that absurdly suggests these parents, teachers, and students are somehow paid operatives rather than concerned members of the community.

Saavedra quickly followed Roenisch’s lead, responding to Carroll’s open letter with open contempt. “Stay in your lane, John,” he wrote. “It’s clear you are not aware of the facts, and you should have reached out to us to get informed prior to your doing something performative like this.”

Both trustees continue to claim that key information justifies their decision, yet neither has publicly provided any documentation or consistent explanation. Their refusal to present transparent evidence has only fueled public suspicion that the firings were not based on legitimate programmatic concerns, but rather on political and personal animus.

Saavedra, in particular, has earned a reputation for bullying and intimidation throughout this controversy. During the June 3 board meeting, he shouted at TUHSD Superintendent Tara Taupier, accusing her of dishonesty and publicly attacking her for revealing information that contradicted the board’s narrative. His behavior reflects what many see as a deliberate strategy: deflect scrutiny, silence dissent, and obscure the facts behind a veil of aggression.

Notably, Roenisch and Saavedra have not shown this level of scrutiny or hostility toward other district expenditures. Over the past year, the board has approved numerous contracts, consultant agreements, and budget allocations without the kind of aggressive resistance or public justifications they have demanded around the contracts of Paul Austin and Tenisha Tate. The selective intensity of their opposition — focused solely on two Black educators whose work directly supported marginalized students — has only deepened community concern that their actions are not rooted in fiscal responsibility, but in something far more troubling.

In recent years, there was a period—however brief—when public declarations of anti-racism carried significant weight within liberal circles. The election of Barack Obama, the cultural canonization of Martin Luther King Jr., the rise of corporate diversity initiatives, and widespread societal norms made explicit racism unacceptable in many spaces. Public figures avoided racial slurs, and even the most affluent white elites largely refrained from openly crediting their success solely to personal merit. This performance was never universal nor always sincere, but it carried enough cultural power to shape public behavior.

The United States was bending toward justice.

Sadly, that moment has passed. The rise of Donald Trump has shifted the political winds. As national attention drifts away from concepts of equity and inclusion, certain right-wing elements within traditionally liberal communities have begun to strike at even the appearance of racial progressivism. The performance of anti-racism, once necessary for social standing, no longer offers the same utility. And for some, this has offered a welcome opportunity to abandon the pretense altogether.

The result has been a resurgence of overt racism in spaces once considered safely liberal — even in communities like Marin County. The events of recent weeks in the Tamalpais Union High School District offer a stark example.

Earlier this month, three TUHSD board members — Jennifer Holden, Cynthia Roenisch, and Kevin Saavedra — voted to terminate contracts for two highly successful Black educators, Tenisha Tate and Paul Austin, who had been widely praised for their work improving outcomes for Black students at Tam High. The vote followed weeks of mounting concern, but little public explanation from the board majority.

Initially, the board attempted to quietly eliminate the contracts by allowing them to lapse without renewal. Only after significant public outcry did they schedule a vote. At the meeting, hundreds of students, teachers, parents, and community members voiced strong support for retaining the two educators. Yet Holden, Roenisch, and Saavedra proceeded with their decision. Several attendees noted the dismissive and at times hostile demeanor of board members during the meeting, particularly as community members — many of them Black — pleaded for transparency and fairness.

The reasons behind the dismissals remain opaque. Funding was already allocated, and the program's success was widely acknowledged. No formal complaints or performance issues were raised. The teachers union appears to have been in support of the contracts as well as other educators in the area. Despite our extensive outreach to community members, no clear constituency supporting the dismissals has been identified.

“It was ugly,” one parent told this publication at a recent rally at Tamalpais High School. “You could see in their faces that they had made up their minds long before anyone spoke. The community was practically begging them to keep the programs, and they didn’t care.”

“I felt like Cynthia was just laughing at us,” another parent told me. “Go watch a board meeting and watch how she treats black people and how she treats white people. There’s a big difference there, it’s right on film.”

One Tam High teacher remarked, “We’ve been talking about closing the achievement gap for years, and nothing worked. This program was finally making a difference. It’s just crazy that they would cut it. They don’t have a backup plan.”

“I voted for Jenny,” a community member told me. “She lied to us. She lied in her whole campaign and now look what she’s doing? It’s embarrassing.”

Another parent added, “Kevin has always made problematic comments. He’s anti DEI. He talks about being ‘anti-woke.’ He’s rude, dismissive, and hostile whenever these issues come up.”

“This isn’t about the budget,” another community member said. “They’re lying. This isn’t about budget at all.”

The dismissals have sparked ongoing protests and potential legal challenges. Multiple sources indicated that Marin County Superintendent John Carroll may intervene, and there are reports that civil rights complaints may be filed with the district attorney.

What happened in TUHSD is not an isolated event, but a preview. As national political rhetoric grows more explicitly racist and authoritarian, similar attacks on educators, students, and communities of color are likely to accelerate — even in places long considered safely progressive.

For some, the backlash is not just about policy — it is about revenge: revenge for losing cultural power, for being asked to share privilege, for witnessing marginalized communities finally make progress. That revenge now moves through school boards, quietly erasing Black excellence under the cover of bureaucratic procedure.

And unless confronted directly, it will not stop here.