Tamalpais High School

Tamalpais Union High School District was founded in 1907, to serve students from the Mill Valley Elementary and Sausalito Elementary School Districts who had previously commuted to San Rafael to continue their education. Tamalpais Union High School held its first classes with 70 students in 1908, in tent-like structures. Ernest E. Wood took the lead in founding the District and was the first principal. In its second year, there were six teachers, 100 students, and 300 volumes in the school library. By the 1913–1914 school year, enrollment had increased to 175, with eight faculty; the library holdings had grown to 650 books plus subscriptions to eight magazines and two newspapers. Known in its early years as Tamalpais Polytechnic High School, Tam was a comprehensive high school from its beginning, with a curriculum that included both academic subjects and technical training. In an interview with the local newspaper the year before he died, Principal Wood said, "I believe the students learned by doing things. I believe in the philosophy of students getting in and doing work and accomplishing things." News • On February 27, 1967, after a year of increased racial tension and disturbances, regular classes were canceled for "Breakthrough Day," a student-initiated teach-in on race relations. All students and faculty met in Mead Theater and then broke out into discussion groups around campus. The event was widely covered by local and national media. • In 1981, Antenna Theater premiered Chris Hardman's High School at Tam during the fourth Bay Area Playwrights Festival. The work introduced Hardman's performance art concept, "Walkmanology," with Sony Walkmans providing the narration to audience members as they walked the Tam campus observing the story. In 1982, Antenna presented the Pink Prom at Tam. In this play, unrehearsed student actors wore the Walkmans, which provided their stage direction, while the audience interacted with the actors and each other. Antenna Theater later spun off its Walkmanology concept to Antenna Audio, which has become a leading international producer of audio tours for museums and other attractions. • In the 1989–1990 school year, members of the student body petitioned to formally remove the school's original mascot "Indians" at the interdiction of Sacheen Littlefeather, a pretendian Marin County resident and activist for Native American causes. The original mascot had been chosen to recognize the area's indigenous inhabitants, the Miwoks, and was represented by illustrations (both dignified and caricature), costumed performers, and, beginning in the 1960s, a wooden sculpture named Charlie. Sports teams were identified only as "Tam" for the fall and winter seasons of that school year. A schoolwide contest was held, and the Red Tailed Hawks was chosen as the winner, beating out other entries such as Mountaineers and Locomotives. The Red Tailed Hawk logo and mascot was adopted beginning in the 1990–1991 school year. Tam High was one of the first American institutions to remove a "politically incorrect" Native American moniker. were it not for the immediate uproar. The controversial plan was objected to by several parents, as well as San Francisco Archbishop John R. Quinn, all calling for it to be rescinded. The following week, after the parents of one student threatened to sue, the district postponed the program indefinitely. In June, Sausalito pharmacist Fred Mayer, originator of "Condom Week" in 1979, announced that he would give free condoms to high school students that summer. Despite the program being deferred, a suit was filed in June. On August 1, the Marin County Superior Court denied the request for an injunction, since the district had not approved the program. About 1990, Tam initiated the Condom Availability Program, which provides free condoms to students who have received parental permission and completed a training session. • In 1997, Tam sophomore Ari Hoffman won a Marin County science fair, showing that fruit flies exposed to different doses of radiation had increased mutation rates and reduced fertility in proportion to the dose. He was subsequently disqualified from the Bay Area Science Fair when officials ruled that his experiment, which resulted in the premature death of 35 of the 200 drosophila, had violated rules on the use of live animals. After widespread news coverage, Hoffman was contacted by Nobel laureate Edward B. Lewis, a geneticist who had begun his own work with fruit flies while in high school. Lewis congratulated Hoffman for his work and sent him a check. The science fair prize was reinstated. (As of 2009, after graduating from Stanford University and completing classwork at the University of California San Francisco Medical School, Hoffman is a predoctoral fellow in bioethics in the Clinical Research Training Program at the intramural campus of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.) • Parents of four African-American students from Tam filed a class-action lawsuit against the Novato Unified School District and administrators at San Marin High School over racial slurs made by San Marin students at a basketball game in 1998, charging that a "climate of intolerance" was allowed at San Marin. The Marin County Athletic League put San Marin on probation for a year because of racial insensitivity. • In 2001, students from Tam and other high schools in the TUHSD formed Marin Students for Liberating Education to discuss the number of prerequisite classes and level of testing. Large numbers of grade 9, 10, and 11 students at Tam and Drake High School boycotted the Stanford-9 achievement tests required by the State's STAR Program after their parents signed waivers. The boycott had been endorsed by school board member Richard Raznikov. Since more than 10% of the students missed the test (22% at Tam and 35% at Drake), the two schools were not given Academic Performance Index (API) rankings, making the schools ineligible for the funds distributed by the State to high-scoring schools. (The three comprehensive high schools in the District, Tam, Drake, and Redwood, received approximately $750,000 in 2000, including individual $1000 scholarships awarded to 339 high-scoring students). Raznikov resigned from the board of trustees in 2002, citing the testing controversy among the reasons. • Tam was the subject of local controversy during the 2004–2005 school year when several anti-gay crimes, targeting a 17-year-old female student wrestler, received coverage in the Associated Press and the local newspapers. When the police investigation suggested the "crimes" were staged, they confronted the "victim" with the evidence causing the student to confess to the hoax. Subsequent coverage of the hoax received even greater attention in the media and blogosphere. • On January 4, 2006, the former president of Tam's Associated Student Body, Nima Shaterian, took his own life. A citywide memorial was held in Mill Valley. In January 2007, junior Clive Barry also committed suicide. • In May 2006, controversy over use of a rifle in a physics class demonstration received national coverage. Teacher David Lapp, a military veteran and avid hunter, had fired his M1 carbine into a wooden block in his physics classes almost every year since 1992 to allow his students to calculate the muzzle velocity of the bullet based on conservation of momentum. After an anonymous complaint from a parent, local police and the district attorney investigated, found no illegality and dropped the case. The experiment had been authorized by the school administration, but the administration responded to pressure by banning the experiment. • In August 2006, physical education teacher and tennis coach Norm Burgos was arrested and charged with sexual battery against a former member of the boys tennis team. The player had been 16 years old in 2002 or 2003, when the alleged event occurred. Burgos pleaded innocent and has received public support from players and their families. Burgos was charged in July 2008 with similar behavior with two other boys. On October 7, 2008, after Burgos had been on unpaid suspension for two years, the Tamalpais Union High School District board of trustees voted to terminate him. In 2011, the jury voted 8–4 to convict Burgos on felony charges in the Superior Court of Marin County. He was later arrested and sentenced to prison. • Misbehavior by parents of San Marin High School basketball players on February 2, 2008, in two games with Tam teams led to drafting of the first code-of-conduct contracts for parents of athletes at a Marin County school. Following a girls junior varsity game at Tam, the mother of a San Marin player followed two referees, shouting obscene insults; later, at San Marin, two parents of San Marin players confronted Tam's coach after he made a gesture indicating that the home team had "choked." Novato police were called and the parents were later asked not to attend the remaining games of the season. Tam Principal Chris Holleran said that the coach's behavior was inappropriate, but declined to discuss possible disciplinary action. Critics of the firings alleged that they were politically motivated actions against the Tam math department, which had questioned district instructional policies and had not cooperated with administrators' attempts to introduce a controversial, highly costly instructional program. • On November 30, 2022, a bomb threat was targeted towards the school, prompting evacuation during the first period of the day. • On December 10, 2024, another bomb threat was targeted towards the school, also prompting evacuation. A student took photos of the event and posted them on social media, under the username ambum.stone, falsely labelling the event as a walkout for alleged CEO assassin, Luigi Mangione. These posts went viral on TikTok and Twitter, until they were taken down for community guidelines violations after the US TikTok ban in January. Tam High Foundation In 1996, Principal Frank Gold and a group of parents formed the nonprofit Tam High Foundation to raise funds for support of the school. The Foundation raised $60,000 its first year, increasing annual funding to $360,000 by 2007–2008. The foundation awards academic grants of up to $10,000 to teachers and administrators. Centennial Tam's first 100 years, 1908 to 2008, were widely recognized in local media. The Tam Centennial Committee, which included the principal, alumni, parents, retired faculty, and others, began meeting in 2006. The centennial celebration began with kickoff events on Homecoming Weekend in September 2007. Several events were scheduled for the year, including a Tam Oral History Project, a centennial documentary, and a celebration over the 2008 Memorial Day weekend. ==Campus==