Santa Monica and Malibu: a divided school district

By The Samohi Staff, 2020-2021

In what might hasten the end of a years-long process to separate Santa Monica and Malibu educational concerns, parties from both sides of the issue and interested stakeholders signed on to a public preliminary hearing with over 300 attendees held on Zoom by the Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE) on Apr. 17 to listen to the city of Malibu’s case for separating SMMUSD into two districts.

After years of feeling as if their needs were not being met by leadership of SMMUSD, whose members mostly represent the interests of Santa Monica with the exception of Craig Foster from Malibu, the city of Malibu filed a petition with LACOE to seek separation from the district in August 2017. Action on the original petition was delayed so that both parties - Malibu and SMMUSD - could negotiate a settlement. In the intervening years, SMMUSD and the city of Santa Monica have come to support a separation, which Malibu stakeholders have called “unification.” However, what cannot be amicably resolved is the financial settlement which both sides want to be a fair and equitable distribution of the property taxes that fund district operations.

During the Apr. 17 LACOE hearing, in front LACOE’S Committee on School District Organization, the officials from the city of Malibu and SMMUSD argued their positions, mostly to defend their proposals for splitting the funding. Malibu claimed their proposal was fair and SMMUSD claimed the proposal would mean a significant loss of revenue for students in Santa Monica in 10 years.

The public comments that followed Malibu and SMMUSD’s presentations contained a variety of criticism of both parties. Proponents for Malibu’s position cited the the quality of the cafeteria food in Malibu, the perceived unwillingness of SMMUSD to offer support during recent health and safety issues at Malibu schools including the response to the discovery toxic building substances in the buildings and the Woolsey fires as reasons for need of a locally controlled school district. Other proponents of the Malibu proposal presented the district’s financial mismanagement and the inequitable offering of learning programs at Malibu schools compared to those at Santa Monica schools as other evidence to support the separation.

In one public comment in which she called a recent communication from the district about the separation as “misinformation,” parent of Malibu alumni, Heather Anderson cast Malibu schools as Cinderella in a “new scene” of the fairy tale in which Malibu schools have never experienced the plethora of learning programs like Career and Technical Education classes, a one-four summer language academy or family engagement programs.

“Malibu is tired of carrying the water for Santa Monica Malibu Unified School District without equity or accountability. It is time for their three wealthy, beautiful and talented stepsisters in Santa Monica to get real and figure out how to wash their own dang clothes,” Anderson said.

The public comments against the Malibu proposal for separation centered on the possible financial harm to Santa Monica schools, specifically to traditionally marginalized students. Representatives from the ACLU, the Santa Monica-Malibu teachers union and the Santa Monica City Council claimed that Malibu’s proposed financial settlement will harm the district by forcing it to trim $30 million over the next 10 years from its program budget, despite extra funding from the city of Santa Monica, according to a recent district statement.

“Santa Monica is proud of our partnership with our local public schools in the midst of the greatest economic downturn, since the Great Depression. The voters of Santa Monica voted to increase local taxes and to advise the city council to devote 50 percent of the revenues to Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District. And while I understand Malibu's desire for its own district, it's heartbreaking to think that the cost of fulfilling that desire will be an immediate and effectively permanent diminishing in the funding for Santa Monica schools,” current Santa Monica City Councilwoman and former Santa Monica mayor Gleam Davis said.

According to Octavio Castelo, secretary to the LACOE Committee on School District Organization, a second hearing on this matter will soon be scheduled for early June 2021 at which time the committee will present its analysis of the proposal and vote on approval or denial. If approved, the proposal will then enter LACOE’s regular review process consisting of multiple hearings.