The Kentfield School District and the Marin County Office of Education spent more than $849,000 combined in a legal battle over a building on the Kent Middle School campus that houses a special education school.
The two public entities revealed the amount of the expenditures after the Marin Independent Journal requested the information under the California Public Records Act.
Kentfield School District said it spent $737,737 while the Marin County Office of Education said it spent $61,566. The true cost of mounting the county office’s defense was not revealed by the request, however, because a portion of the cost was covered by legal insurance. The legal insurance also provided $250,000 to help cover the cost of the settlement.
The county office and most of the school districts in the county participate in a cost sharing agreement that provides insurance for legal defense. As a result, the school district, in a roundabout way, helped pay for a portion of the county office’s defense.
“I think absolutely it was money well spent, and the resolution was agreeable to both sides,” said Liz Schott, superintendent of the Kentfield School District.
“There was an honest dispute over ownership of the land and buildings. It needed to be resolved and this is how we got to a mutually satisfactory resolution,” Schott said.
“There was a lot of effort put in prior to the filing of the lawsuit and it wasn’t fruitful,” she said. “There wasn’t any other way of doing it at that point.”
David Hellman, a trustee of the Marin County Board of Education, said, “As a lawyer, my general position is that any lawsuit is hopefully avoidable, but it is up to each party to make that decision.”
The parties announced in March that they had agreed to settle the dispute. The county office agreed to pay the school district $1.42 million for the Grant Grover building at 800 College Ave that houses a county-run school for special education students.
Bob Henry, the county office’s attorney, said that the insurance carrier was willing to contribute to the settlement to avoid further litigation costs.
Asked if the insurance carrier played a role in the county office’s decision to settle, Henry said, “I’m not going to say they had a vote, but obviously they were a major player in the room.”
The school district first sued the county office in 2013. It sought to displace the special education program so it could use the entire building to accommodate growing enrollment. But the county resisted, saying that it had an agreement dating back to 1969 to use two classrooms for schooling children with special needs.
The school district asserted that the county office had violated the agreement because the original agreement called for schooling children with hearing problems, and the current program serves special-needs students, mostly 18 to 22 years old, some with severe emotional and developmental problems.
Schott said that the school district paid about $5,000 for the building back in 1969. But Hellman said the county office purchased the 6,500-square-foot, four-classroom building with help from the state for a great deal more than that and turned over title to the school district as an incentive for it to house the special education facility. At the time districts were reluctant to house such a facility.
“The school district didn’t pay anything for it,” Hellman said.
Hellman said it was important for the county office to retain access to the classrooms because it is an ideal location for the special education program. Some of the students take classes at the College of Marin.
“We looked for another location and couldn’t find anything that works as well,” Hellman said.
County school board member Patricia Garbarino said, “On behalf of the children I think it worked out well.”
Juli Kauffman, president of the Kentfield School District Board of Trustees, said, “Both parties worked tirelessly to resolve the matter with the best interests of student needs in the foreground. I believe that our settlement reflects our collective efforts.”
Schott said the settlement money won’t be used immediately for new classrooms.
“We have in the meantime gone out for a bond and are using bond proceeds to build the number of projects that we need, but that money has to be used for capital projects as with any sale of school district property.”
Kauffman said, “Our board has not yet discussed or decided any specifics.”
