Malibu abruptly separates from SMMUSD (no art yet)
By Sakura Amano, Staff Writer
At a City Council meeting on Oct. 12, Malibu came to the decision that they would be moving forward with an approach which would separate SMMUSD into two separate districts. This situation is not unaccustomed, as Malibu has attempted to form an independent school district for nearly a decade now, due to large geographical distance, cultural differences and feeling a lack of representation by the SMMUSD Board of Education. The recent actions from Malibu are a reinstallation of the petition filed by the Malibu City Council with the Los Angeles County Office of Education on Aug. 31, 2017. With this, concerns regarding financial equity between the students of each district have come into question.
“In times like this, how do you create greater inequities...does it make sense to create this gap?” Samo Principal Antonio Shelton said.
Following this news, a letter was sent by SMMUSD Superintendent, Dr. Ben Drati, to Malibu City Manager, Reva Feldman, which has since been forwarded to SMMUSD parents, guardians, staff and community members. Within the letter, Drati expressed feelings of discontentment as the consensus had been formed unilaterally, without contacting the district in its decision.
“We are disappointed in what appears to be a retreat to a position we thought we had all moved beyond in our discussions. We are deeply skeptical of what we’ve seen thus far,” Drati said in the letter.
To illustrate the disproportionate funding which would take place between districts on a per pupil basis, projections shown at the City Council meeting display Malibu starting at $16,494 compared to $13,592 for Santa Monica students. Further, it is predicted based on previous data that after a five year period, Malibu’s per student funding will have reached $25,998 in contrast to $14,264 for Santa Monica students. Ultimately, this means that it is calculated for Malibu to have a five year growth rate of 58 percent, while Santa Monica oversees a fairly minor growth rate of 5 percent.
However, the accuracy of these statistics have since been doubted by Malibu’s financial consultant, LaTanya Kirk-Carter as she claims that Santa Monica students would in fact not lose money as a result of district separation. Kirk-Carter claims that the data presented at the Council meeting failed to take revenues generated by local sales taxes and annual funding from the city into consideration.
As of now, future decisions and predictions are still very uncertain. Nevertheless, the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District delegation has stated that they are committed to finding a solution and agreement with the Malibu City Council that ensures equity and fairness between the two possibly new, separate districts.