School Board Action Leads to Rumblings about Malibu Secession

• Local Parents Voice Displeasure with Construction Funding Shift from Malibu High School Campus

BY HANS LAETZ

With some Malibu parents angrily calling for a divorce, members of the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District have decided to revisit the decision to strip all short-term construction funding from the district’s middle schools—a decision that shifted $13.5 million from Malibu High to Santa Monica High School.

But the board’s decision may be too little, too late for incensed Malibu residents, some of whom promise to vote down a crucial tax measure next February, and work to cleave a Malibu-only school district from the western end of the SMMUSD.

“You had to know you were playing with fire,” said Malibu City Councilmember Andy Stern, parent of an MHS student. “I think that was the single worst destructive decision this board has made in decades.”

Parent-Teacher Association officers also told the board, meeting in Malibu last Thursday, that they support splitting the district. “You have a group of parents looking at something that is very exciting, and that is Malibu becoming its own school district,” said parent volunteer Cathleen Baum. “I think you are going to see that happening.”

The board last month bowed to an angry, last-minute campaign by Santa Monica High parents, who pointed at a clean and well-landscaped Malibu High and worn, dirty facilities at Samohi, which is 70 years old.

Malibu High, a mixed middle and high school, lost $13.5 million to Samohi, a move that indefinitely delays a promise to Malibu voters that passage of last year’s bond election would remove temporary classrooms from the campus and pay for a new classroom wing.

The district has about $174 million in construction bond money from Proposition BB. A citizens committee had recommended that Samohi get $38.4 million worth of construction for its 3300-student campus, and Malibu High would get $27 million for its 1200-student campus.

The board, dominated 9-1 by Santa Monica residents, yielded to Santa Monicans who want $65 million spent at their children’s school. The board postponed most middle and elementary school construction and shifted that money to Samohi.

At the latest meeting, Board President Kathy Wisnicki, the lone Malibu board member, got little support from the five Santa Monica board members present. Four other Santa Monica board members did not make the trip to Malibu.

“I would like staff to really take a look at the projects slated for Malibu High School because it is one campus,” Wisnicki said. “We’re not talking about a high school campus or a middle school campus. We have sixth graders talking classes in the same building as 12th graders.”

That didn’t impress Santa Monica board member Maria Leon-Vasquez, who dismissed the Malibu parents’ insistence that the middle school is an integral part of the high school as “semantics.”

“Whether it is one high school or middle school—whatever—then we are going to open [the process] up for all the middle schools,” she said, waving her hand.

Board member Oscar de la Torre noted that $38 million in bond money is unallocated at this time, and said the board could consider that as a reserve that could be tapped to fully fund the Malibu High projects. And some district officials have said they are confident that there is enough money in the pot right now to take care of both schools.

But the last-minute decision to shift the initial spending from Malibu to Santa Monica infuriated even longterm parent volunteers who have in the past organized election campaigns for bond and parcel tax votes.

“Our unified school district of Santa Monica and Malibu is a concept that I don’t think makes sense any longer,” said longtime school district supporter Karen Farrer at Thursday’s meeting. “It’s time for everybody to acknowledge that our communities are very different: we are the appendage out here geographically [and] numerically.”

The district has two land areas: the City of Santa Monica, and a disconnected section that includes Malibu, with a chunk of the Los Angeles Unified School District separating the two halves. That arrangement dates back to the 1930s, when largely uninhabited Malibu’s school children either attended a one-room primary school in Decker Canyon or took a bus to Samohi.

Malibu property taxes generally raise more money per student than Santa Monica’s, but the City of Santa Monica donates a large chunk of sales tax revenue to all district students, including the 15 percent who are Malibu residents.

A split-the-district movement five years ago attracted some initial support, and a feasibility study was conducted. But the study was never released, and support fizzled.

The Santa Monica parents’ actions have stoked that support: “It’s time we really do just part amicably and go our separate ways and allow each community to work on the issues that are most important to them,” said Farrer, who has organized electoral support for district issues over past years.

Stern said he would lead a campaign to reject next February’s parcel tax election, which if defeated would likely cause music, arts, PE and core subject teachers at all 17 district schools to be laid off.

The city council member said he voted for the bond issue last year over his misgivings, because school board members told him to trust that the money would be spent fairly. He noted that Malibu taxpayers are financing 30 percent of the construction costs, but only getting 12 percent of the money spent at local schools.

“That was the last time I will ever vote for a nickel to go to this district,” Stern said.