Many Assurances about Malibu High Were Not Put in Official Documents

• Coastal Comission Permit Conditions Are Lynchpin for Contentions of Disregarded Promises

BY SUZANNE GULDIMANN

It’s a Sunday morning at 9 a.m. Killdeer and western sandpipers have taken the field at Malibu High School’s football stadium, engaged not in a game but in a hunt for breakfast. In the air above them, a pair of western kingbirds are hunting airborne insects. A scattering of residents are out walking, enjoying the February sunshine and the view of the ocean. In the background, raising above the sounds of softball practice and a tennis game from the brush on the berm beside the field comes the song of the California thrasher, which has been described as being like that of the old world nightingale.
It doesn’t look like it, but this field and the hillside beside it have become a battleground in a conflict between residents and environmentalists on the one side and the school district and sports parents who want to see the school’s athletic program remain competitive.
At the heart of the conflict are three elements of school improvement plans that are being funded by Measure BB bond money: permanent field lighting that would consist of four or six 70-to-80-foot high light poles that have the potential to be in use 203 nights a year; synthetic turf that would replace the grass football field and is being criticized because of its potential to be a health and environmental hazard; and a parking lot consisting of a possible 250 stalls that would run the length of the ridge along the athletic field, and according to critics, will block a deeded trail easement, as well as have the potential to create additional light pollution and negatively affect the coastal sage scrub ecosystem and watershed adjacent to the ridge.
Most residents have been supportive of plans to remodel an existing building and replace the library and administrative buildings with Measure BB funds. They have also praised plans to improve safety and traffic flow, and are quick to point out that they have been providing input and suggestions for the project, but the improvements to the football stadium have raised a red flag.
“I keep hearing people say ‘you should have realized you were buying a house near a school,’” one Sunday morning walker told the Malibu Surfside News. “I think it’s maybe time that the school district realizes that it has built a school in an environmentally sensitive area. It needs to start behaving responsibly. Malibu Park is a little residential pocket surrounded by Zuma Beach and thousands of acres of National Park land. You can’t just do what you want here. You have to respect the law. You have to honor your promises.”
According to residents, the Santa Monica Malibu Unified School District has failed to do just that. In 1994, when the school was starting its football program, a letter from then Principal Michael Matthews assured residents “There are no plans to have night games at any time. There is no electrical infrastructure to support a new lighting system. In the long-term future of the sports activities here, I do not see a need for lighting.”
When the school received its Coastal Development Permit from the California Coastal Commission in 2000 to install the football field, it agreed to eight special conditions. Special condition six was in the form of a deed restriction prohibiting temporary or permanent athletic field lighting, to “protect the nearby scenic areas and native wildlife from avoidable disturbance that would otherwise be associated with nighttime use of the football stadium/ track and field facility,” according to the language in the Coastal Commission staff report on the permit.
Residents say that within a few years of the CDP being issued, the school was using rental lights for night games, funded, according to the school, by contributions from parents.
In 1991, when plans to upgrade Malibu Park Junior High into a full fledged high school were presented, Santa Monica parents protested the plan, claiming that the new school would be a “brain drain,” and strip needed funding away from Santa Monica. Santa Monica and Malibu residents sat on opposite sides of the room at meetings, like relatives at a wedding. Some members of the Santa Monica group wore black armbands, according to reports published in the Los Angeles Times.
Before approving the controversial new school in April of 1991, the board of education adopted revisions in an effort to reconcile the two sides.
District officials, according to a Los Angeles Times article dated March 31, 1991, announced that the new high school “would not have the array of classes and extracurricular activities of Santa Monica High,” in an effort to ease tensions between the two groups. In the April 18 L.A. Times, Eugene Tucker, who was superintendent at that time, is quoted saying “The orchestra and other extracurricular programs would also be scaled to an appropriate size. There [will] be no football team and no business or industrial arts in the foreseeable future.” However, none of the restrictions appear in the language of Malibu high School’s mission statement, or in the minutes of the board of education meeting, when MHS was approved.
Residents are citing this history of past dealings as a reason not to believe assurances from the current school board that their concerns will be heard and that any future promises will be honored.
Malibu Park resident Jay Griffith stated at the Feb. 5 board of education meeting that the school told him when the lights first appeared that they would be “for homecoming night only, just one night. Now it’s six weeks and they want 203 nights. It’s a slippery slope now turned into a landslide.”
“Five or six night games for a high school of 755 students makes no sense in terms of this size expenditure—people should be outraged as the state moves to cut $7 billion [from education],” Harriet Pollen told The News.
These concerns are echoed by her husband, Oxnard High School Principal James Edwards, who told The News that his campus, which has 3100 students, has an average of 25 to 30 nighttime events a year, including soccer, band practice and other events in addition to football. He questioned the need for permanent lighting at MHS and the 203 night number, adding that “The Pacific View League schools have been asked to cut back on night activities. When you flip the switch it’s $120 hour for the first hour, and $90 per hour after that [for electricity]. Supervision is massive. We’re really watching everything with the budget cuts.”
Some critics of the project believe the 203-night number does make sense, if the district plans to rent the facility out as part of a community use agreement it will be negotiating with the city.
“It all makes sense when one realizes it’s about a regional recreational center, not Friday Night Lights,” one resident told The News.
The current board of education, at its Feb. 5 meeting in Malibu, expressed dismay that MHS has been operating temporary lights without a permit. The board approved funds that won’t come from Measure BB to pursue a Coastal Commission amendment to permit temporary lighting for this year’s football season. The board also offered assurances to concerned residents that the district will listen to their concerns and work with them to find a solution that works for the school, the parents and the neighborhood.