Marin education office might buy Fairfax children’s center site

Marin’s top education official is offering a potential solution to the long-running controversy over the fate of the Fairfax-San Anselmo Children’s Center.

John Carroll, the county superintendent of schools, proposed this week that the Marin County Office of Education purchase the children’s center at a nominal cost from Ross Valley School District, the property owners. Alternatively, Carroll said, there could be a joint ownership agreement with the district.

“It’s not a done deal,” Carroll told the Ross Valley School District board at its regular meeting Wednesday. “But it looks like there’s a potential legal pathway to get it done.”

He added that “it would be a deep dive to make it a functional facility,” but worth the effort and money.

“I think we have this really precious thing that we don’t want to lose,” Carroll said.

In any agreement, Carroll said, the county office would immediately offer the children’s center operators, who are tenants of the school district, a long-term lease.

“Our plan is that we want the children who attend the center to understand that they’re not going to have to move out in August,” Carroll said.

He was referring to a resolution passed by the Ross Valley board in September that set an Aug. 31 deadline for the district to sell the center property to its operators, or the center could face potential eviction.

The county proposal, which is subject to a vote by the Marin County Board of Education as well as the Ross Valley trustees, drew positive reactions from both the school district and the center.

“We’re so thankful that MCOE is getting involved,” Marci Trahan, the Ross Valley superintendent, said Wednesday. “It’s so nice we have an additional resource in this situation.”

Shelley Hamilton, the Ross Valley board president, said the district would maintain its “parallel path” for purchasing the center by Aug. 31, or until some type of sale agreement is reached, either with the county or between the district and the center operators.

Hamilton said Carroll has already attended a meeting of the district and center principals and is expected to attend future meetings.

“It’s nice we now have a partner, and that a few of our agencies are coming together,” Hamilton said. “It’s really great to have a whole community approach.”

Principals of both the district and the center, along with their attorneys, have been meeting for months, but the group has been stalled over issues regarding a discount price for the sale.

The property was appraised at $3 million, but the district says it needs more enrollment data from the center to justify a discount. The data needed, however, are deemed confidential and protected by the state, according to the center.

An advisory committee is planning to hold a public hearing on the disposition of the center property at 6 p.m. April 17 at Wade Thomas Elementary School at 150 Ross Ave. in San Anselmo.

Heidi Tomsky, the center’s director, said the nonprofit facility, one of Marin’s few subsidized child care centers serving low-income families or those in underserved populations, has a long legacy.

“The center is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year,” she said. “It goes way back.”

Modernizing the center and allowing it to continue operating would be “an investment in our community and in early childhood education,” she said.

“It’s not a gift that the county would be giving to a private school,” Tomsky said. The community “gets an economic payoff” by “people coming up and then being able to contribute.”

Carroll said early childhood education is one of the top areas of focus for the county office in the next few years.

“Early childhood education is one of our key leverage points in Marin that we have to promote equity in education and to close the achievement gap,” he said. “The county office has a great interest in this center for that reason.”

Carroll said the office purchasing the property would mean the county is then wholly responsible for modernizing the deteriorating buildings and bringing them up to local and state code.

That includes bringing the property into compliance with the state Field Act — an earthquake readiness law governing school buildings — and the Division of the State Architect, which oversees public building construction design in California.

The aging condition of the property was a major issue that triggered the initial controversy last spring. That was when Terry Tao, the district’s attorney, warned trustees the site was unsafe for children and that trustees could be held personally liable if something bad happened.

Tao urged the district to evict the center, but the trustees decided instead to set up the year-long sale process to see if the center operators could take over the responsibility to modernize the site.

Carroll, who has done a walk-through on the Deer Park property accompanied by county engineers, said staffers estimated a minimum cost of $20 million for the restoration, based on the square footage. The actual cost could be greater than that, he said.

“We’ve done our due diligence,” Carroll said. He told trustees that other Marin agencies, such as the Board of Supervisors, might be able to help financially.

“This has been a nurturing place for thousands of children,”  Tomsky said. “It’s been a hard road for all of us.”

Any decision on the county’s purchase is subject to a vote of the Marin Board of Education. The board is set to meet at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Marin County Office of Education building at 1111 Las Gallinas Ave. in San Rafael.