Trustees will not renew consultant contracts for Black student support services at Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley.

After a highly charged, emotional and, at times, raucous three-hour meeting on Tuesday, the Tamalpais Union High School District board voted 3 to 2 not to renew the two contracts for married couple Tenisha Tate-Austin, a longtime Marin educator, and Paul Austin, founder of the Marin City-based nonprofit Play Marin.

Board president Cynthia Roenisch, vice president Kevin Saavedra and trustee Jenny Holden voted in favor of non-renewal. Trustees Ida Green and Emily Uhlhorn voted to renew.

At issue was a $150,000 contract for Tenisha Tate-Austin to oversee the Black Student Success Support Team and to monitor student test, attendance and academic data; and an $100,000 contract for Austin to run the Tam Hub drop-in student mentoring and tutoring center and provide other direct student support services.

“For us, it’s the babies,’” Austin said after the vote. “So much work went into this process the past seven months. And there’s so much more we can do. That’s the pain of it for us.”He said the district “calls you to triage stuff, and they want you there to help uplift, and then they pull the rug out from under you.” He said their work “has helped everybody, not just the Black kids but the White kids too — that’s the ripple effects that this has had.”

Tate-Austin, who has served as an administrator at Tam High, and at middle schools in Marin City, Larkspur and San Rafael, said the district “promised to listen to us” before the couple agreed to help when racial anxiety and tensions were escalating at Tam in the 2023-24 school year.

“You came to us asking for help,” Tate-Austin said. “And now, you want to refuse us, like we did something conniving, like I’m not an expert. I have multiple master’s degrees. I have been a principal, I have been an educator for 15 years — don’t play me.”

“And don’t go waving the white flag for us again,” she said.

Roenisch and Saavedra said the initial approval of the two contracts in August of last year did not follow protocol. They alleged an effort by superintendent Tara Taupier to push through the expensive contracts — both of which are part-time and are for only one of five district schools — without a proper vetting process.

“I can hardly believe that you have so comprehensively mismanaged this situation,” Saavedra said to Taupier at the meeting. “And I can hardly believe that instead of acknowledging your actions, you are forcing this discussion out into open, where we will have to air your dirty laundry.”

Saavedra alleged Taupier “tried to sneak these and other contracts through the side door on the consent agenda, but we pulled them off for discussion and proper approval, a process that was not completed until December.”

By the time of the Aug. 13 approval, the trustees were told the consultants had already started their work, according to Saavedra. Roenisch said she and the board at the time were “shamed publicly” about their need to take a closer look at the contracts after they were pulled off the consent agenda on Aug. 6.

“You disregarded clear direction from our attorney not to proceed, and then initiated work that you were not legally authorized to initiate,” Saavedra said to Taupier.

“You knowingly took actions that put the district at risk,” he said. “After that, you committed that the services that Paul and Tenisha were providing would be brought in-house after one year.”

He alleged that Taupier, during the board’s recent agenda planning meeting, told him and Roenisch that she would be recommending discontinuation of the contracts. At Tuesday’s meeting, Taupier recommended renewal of the Austins’ contracts for one year.

“You are a liar,” Saavedra said to Taupier.

Roenisch said the district, as a public entity, needed to be able to make the legal argument that the Austins’ work “were for services that were not being provided on campus,” or to make up for a reduction in staff. She said neither could be substantiated and that the Austins’ work could be replicated using in-house personnel.

Taupier, who has resigned her post effective June 30, strongly disputed the allegations.

“I do not lie to anyone. This is false,” she said. She said she changed her recommendation when she heard of the multiple benefits of the Austins’ work.

Those included a substantial decrease, year over year, in D, F or Incomplete grades among Black students, a reduction in absences and an increase in reports by Black students of feelings of belonging, according to Kelly Lara, an assistant superintendent.

Taupier also disputed that the consultants had already started work before the Aug. 13 contract approval. She said only some planning was going on, not the actual work.

“You don’t need to call me a liar,” she said to Saavedra.

A majority of 40 members of the public who testified Tuesday said that, despite any alleged procedural violations, the Austins’ work has been successful in improving academic data and the cultural climate for Black students at Tam High in the 2024-25 school year.

Tam High English teacher Eric Ayrault, who will depart at the end of the month for a position in the Novato Unified School District, said the Tam High teachers did not have the skills that the Austins provided.

“Paul and Tenisha added something the rest of us can’t,” Ayrault told the board. “They met with each of us — me — in our classroom about kids who were having trouble,” he said. “I have students who would have failed, except for their interventions.”

On Wednesday, several other Tamalpais High School teachers protested comments made by the board Tuesday that existing Tam High teachers do not support the Austins.

“As a teacher who is here everyday and has witnessed the success of the BSSST, I cannot imagine a price point that would be too expensive to keep these professionals,” Mike Slattery, an education specialist, said in an email, referring to the Black Student Success Support Team.

“Tenisha and Paul provide an element of community representation and connection with students that cannot be duplicated,” Slattery added.

On Tuesday, the Austins sat together in somber silence as more than 75 people who were crowded into the standing-room-only district conference center in Larkspur waited for the couple’s contracts to be voted on near the end of the board meeting.

When Holden, the deciding vote in the 3-2 split, started speaking about her extensive research into the issue and how she became skeptical about how the contracts were approved, the crowd became restless. Holden said she felt there was a lot of “misinformation” circulating about the contracts.

“You’re not the experts, we are,” Cristine DeBerry, a Tam High parent, called out. “These are our kids.”

Holden then joined Saavedra and Roenisch in voting not to renew the contract for Tate-Austin.

At that point, Roenisch threatened to “clear the room” if people did not stop shouting out.

“Shouting from the audience is not allowing us to do our business,” Roenisch said. “You had public comment.”

Later, before the vote Austin’s contract, Roenisch called for a brief recess to take the temperature down.

Upon reconvening, trustees voted 3 to 2 not to renew Austin’s contract. The crowd filed out, some expressing sadness and defeat.

“I just feel heartbroken, honestly,” DeBerry said. “That we make all this effort to get our kids ready, and to send them to that school, and it’s been nothing but hostile.”

DeBerry, whose online petition to keep the contracts had been signed by 750 people as of Tuesday, said the board meeting had been rough.

“To be treated so rudely, and so condescendingly, and to suggest that we’ve been involved in some misinformation campaign, when all we are saying is, ‘The contracts you approved are working. Thank you. Please keep them going.’”

She said the trustees “treated us like an enemy, an invader in their space.”

Austin said he and his wife have seen, over the past year, Black students expressing “joy and happiness” at school for the first time. That uplifting, empowerment and trust that they built with the students and the entire school community is now “broken,” he said.

“I hope everybody who has seen what happened today will take a stance to help Black kids like never before,” Austin said. “They’re just different. It just takes a certain type of person to help them. It’s not easy. It’s never been that easy.”

Roenisch said she and other trustees would meet with the incoming superintendent, Courtney Goode, at the end of this month, to develop a plan to keep the Tam Hub and Black Student Success Support Team in operation using existing Tam High staff.

Goode is expected to start in the superintendent’s job on July 1.

At least 50 current Tamalpais High School teachers are expected to sign a joint statement on Wednesday protesting the trustees’ decision and refuting remarks made at the meeting Tuesday that most of the teachers do not support having the couple at the school.

“We believe in the work of Paul and Tenisha and are grateful to have them working at our school and we want them back,” said the statement.

“Shame on the board for ignoring so many members of our community, so many of our students, of our colleagues and of our friends and neighbors in what can only be described as a malicious attack on our institution,” the statement said.

Teachers said they are planning a rally at 8 a.m. Thursday to call for the Austins’ contract non-renewal to be rescinded.