Supporters of a Separate Malibu School
District Study Gather Signatures
• Volunteers Expect to Collect Total
Number Required by the End of the Month
Malibu voters are starting to receive
campaign mailings from city council candidates on the April 8
ballot, but that’s not the only political game in town.
Also drawing attention is consideration of secession from the
Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District. A petition drive
is currently underway to determine whether to study the
feasibility of terminating a half-century-long connection with
Santa Monica and form a separate local school district.
District secession emerges as a community
issue intermittently, but a recent clash over allocation of
Measure BB bond money and displeasure with facets of the parcel
tax consolidation and increase in the form of Measure R, which
would not have passed this month if it was up to Malibu voters,
have breathed new life into the notion.
Study of secession requires the signatures
of approximately 25 percent of the 8370 registered city
voters and the 1989 voters on the rolls in unincorporated
Malibu (all of whom are in the school district) to get the
feasibility study started.
Volunteers are tentatively slated to
collect signatures at the Ralph’s Market on Saturday,
Feb. 23, 10-1; Monday, Feb. 25, 10-1; and Wednesday, Feb. 27, 3:
30-5:30. Some of the times for voter sign-up at HOWS Market are:
Thursday, Feb. 21, 9-noon; and Sunday, Feb. 24, 9-11 and 3-6.
Signatures have to be validated within 30
days of petition completion. If the signatures pass muster, the petition goes to the Committee on School District
Organization, an 11-member county panel charged with
reviewing district reorganizations.
The committee could take several months, as
many as six, to hold public hearings and study the financial
and educational impacts of district reorganization on all
of the public schools in Malibu and Santa Monica.
If the committee finds separation to be
feasible, the application proceeds to the State Board of
Education. Again, there is no formal timetable as to when that
panel would have to take action on the proposal.
The state board is expected to conduct its
own feasibility study, as well as undertake an environmental
impact report. Only if both of these studies result in
favorable analyses, would the matter go to a Malibu vote.
A random sampling of Malibuites
casting ballots on Super Tuesday by a team of Malibu Surfside
News reporters indicated that residents appear divided on the
merits of a district split.
