Proposed change from area-wide to trustee district voting could help guarantee a Malibu voice on the board
The second of two public hearings on changing the method in which Malibu and Santa Monica voters elect Board of Education members is on the table for discussion once again, Feb. 10, 9:30 a.m. at SMMUSD headquarters, 1717 4th St. in Santa Monica. The first hearing, on Jan. 31, was scheduled at Santa Monica College’s Malibu campus.
The hearings focus on changing the current area-wide voting system to trustee voting areas. The proposal would divide the area into seven districts. Each would elect one board member from their district every four years.
Currently, all registered voters in the two cities can vote for at-large candidates, which Malibu residents argue disadvantages Malibu in that typically can only elect one member to the board if any at all. There have been periods with no Malibu representation on the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Board, which of course has led to the decades-long negotiations to separate the two school districts, still not finalized.
Malibu attorney Kevin Shenkman, who specializes in voting rights, petitioned the Los Angeles County Committee on School District Organization (LACCSDO), to implement trustee area elections “in furtherance of the purposes of the California Voting Rights Act.”
Shenkman hired a demographer who drew three sets of maps. The maps split Malibu into districts that include parts of Santa Monica.
“Maps one and two are superior to map three,” Shenkman explained. “Maps one and two divide Malibu and the unincorporated area around Malibu in approximately half. That gives Malibu an opportunity to elect up to two members of the SMMUSD board. Each one of those districts (maps one and two) are about 50 percent Malibu by population. The rest are from Santa Monica. Map 3 has one district that is 100 percent Malibu and another district that’s about 12 percent Malibu.
“Obviously the 100 percent Malibu district would elect a representative chosen by Malibu residents, but the district that has only about 12 percent from Malibu, we think it’s likely that in that instance the Malibu voters in that district would have no more say in that election than Malibu residents of a whole currently have in the current elections. It allows for better representation of everyone.”
The reason Malibu is not mapped solely into its own district is because Malibu, along with neighboring unincorporated Los Angeles County accounts for more than one-seventh of the population of the district. Each district requires substantially equal populations.
“The third map proposed has one trustee area that is 100 percent Malibu, but that’s not the entirety of the Malibu portion of the school district,” Shenkman contends. “The proposal is rankling the Santa Monica power structure that claim the maps are invalid because there’s no evidence the current system disenfranchises minority voters and that the maps are noncontiguous. One or two of the trustee areas are noncontiguous but that’s just the natural result of the school district not being contiguous.”
Shenkman pointed out that besides the Long Beach School District that includes Catalina Island, he knows of no other school district in California other than SMMUSD that is noncontiguous. He also stated, “The law won’t allow since 1981 the creation of noncontiguous school districts. Obviously, the City of Malibu has been working on fixing that problem.”
The Los Angeles County Committee on School District Organizations (LACCSDO), part of the Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE), hosts the hearings but no decisions will be made at either meeting. Once an independent Malibu school district is established, the election of Santa Monica board members will be moot for Malibu.
Though the voting petition and the petition to form a Malibu Unified School District are different actions, an attorney representing SMMUSD in the trustee area petition, stated that SMMUSD could not pursue work needed to achieve unification (the legal term for splitting Malibu into its own district) if it also had to attend to the trustee area petition, and that the trustee area petition should be delayed in order for SMMUSD to “undertake significant public outreach” on unification. Malibu Board member Stacy Rouse disagreed saying she thought the district could carry out both initiatives.
“SMMUSD is a highly complex organization that handles multiple nuanced issues with regularity,” Rouse said. “Although having the timing overlap is not ideal, I have every confidence that the district and the district’s counsel can handle both of these important and complicated issues, that are separate but related, in tandem.”
She attended the Jan. 31 meeting virtually, will be present at the Feb. 10 meeting and encouraged community participation.
The public may also contact the county committee office at (562) 922-6110 for instructions on providing written comments, requesting translation services for the meetings, or for questions.
Shenkman concluded, “This is Malibu’s best hope of having representation in a Santa Monica-Malibu school district. It may be that at some point the districts split, but in the meantime we ought to get our fair representation.”