SMMUSD Separation

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While I, like everyone else in my community, is heartened that your staff has recommended moving district unification into the regular review process, it’s impossible to overlook the backhanded slight against Malibu’s petition in declaring “eight of the Nine Conditions may not be found to be substantially met.” Tellingly, your staff acquits itself by conditioning this conclusion as “based on information we have at this stage.” In so doing, they’re passing the buck to others in the regular review process to “engage with the parties and the impacted community.” 

 

Had your staff bothered to “engage with the parties and the impacted community” in the first place, their “information… at this stage” would have yielded less speculative and biased conclusions and spared the need for this lengthy corrective. 

 

Whether these errors are the result of sloppy, hasty work or actual malice against my community — I will not hazard a guess. After all, it was your own Dr. Allison Deegan who, when queried during a September 2015 LACOE presentation to the SMMUSD board about the likelihood of the process being “subject to judgment calls,” responded, “I would say it’s subjective.”

 

Indeed. Six years later, after reading staff’s assessment — “subjective” seems an extreme understatement. So please do not casually dismiss this letter, for the errors and misrepresentations in the staff report must not be allowed to stand without rebuttal. 

 

I will leave it to Malibu city officials and representatives to address the fiscal issues, and focus my comments on Conditions 1, 2 and 4 which, collectively, indicate a near-total lack of understanding of Malibu, its population, culture and history. 

 

  1. “The reorganized districts will be adequate in terms of number of pupils enrolled.”

    Your staff rationale that an eventual MUSD “may not have, nor may not be able to maintain, enrollment of at least 1,501 students” is disconnected from history and reality.

    First, as a purely practical and factual matter, the city has already explained the impact of the Woolsey Fire, from which we are still recovering. As a survivor of numerous previous fires and a sitting Malibu Public Works Commissioner, I am well acquainted with the recovery process generally as well as the slow pace of recovery from Woolsey specifically, which destroyed over 400 homes and left many others smoke-damaged. This population will return — it simply takes time.

    Second, there are the added matters of COVID and the accompanying heavy-handed administration from SMMUSD which have driven numerous families to home schooling or private schools. This is not speculative. I can personally identify at least a dozen families who fit this profile, all of whom would sign affidavits asserting as much. Their stories are all similar — after being rebuffed or ignored by SMMUSD administration they opted for what they saw as alternatives better attuned to their families’ needs. The loss of many of our students over the past two years is, therefore, less related to anything specific to Malibu than a deep resentment of and distrust toward the Santa Monica administration whom parents feel is dismissive of their concerns and overly oriented to political forces within the city of Santa Monica. With Santa Monica administration out of the picture, numerous families will happily return.

    Third, there is our historic demography. Throughout the 1970s, Malibu had three elementary schools. In 1980, population decrease forced the closure of Pt. Dume Elementary. Sixteen years later, in 1996, it reopened. Finally, in 2018, with the restructuring of Malibu’s overall school population, Juan Cabrillo Elementary was closed to make way for the new high school building, and its student body merged with Pt. Dume, which was renamed to the current Malibu Elementary. All these changes are related to normal population fluctuations over time, a common phenomenon in small, rural communities like Malibu. As one generation ages out, another eventually replaces them. Had your staff consulted with any longstanding local realtors or lifelong residents such as I, that fact would have been made abundantly clear. The characterization of our community as “graying” with property values pricing out families with school aged children is unsupported by history and evidence. There exist numerous communities and school districts throughout California with comparable populations and property values which stand in direct contrast to staff’s assertions.

    Fourth, your staff report dismissively brushes over the recent census decrease in Malibu’s population, as if this is a permanent condition beyond resolve. It is incontrovertible, based on at least thirty years of data, that Malibu’s population is stable and dips only in the wake of natural disasters. This latest dip coincides precisely with Woolsey in 2018 and has since been prolonged by the pandemic. In time, as we recover from both Woolsey and COVID, our population generally and the accompanying student population, will return.

    Arguments related to hard enrollment numbers, however, are merely addressing the letter of the law. What of the spirit of the law? Why has California established a floor of 1,501 students? Per staff report, “The State of California has determined a threshold of 1501… is the minimum threshold required to have sufficient students to field and finance the programs that a comprehensive school district requires.” Based on your staff’s own financial assessment, Malibu is already an exception to that generalization and would have no trouble fielding and financing “the programs that a comprehensive school district requires” even with a smaller student population. Part of our uniqueness as a city is that we have the fiscal stability to sustain any population of students, no matter the natural fluctuations. If anything, this strengthens Malibu’s petition as it demonstrates our ability to look after our own more effectively than almost any other community of comparable size and geography.

    Either way — letter of the law or spirit of the law — based on facts and historical trends, Malibu easily clears this Condition. Staff’s finding should be that student population, after mitigation of current disaster- and pandemic-related conditions, WILL BE MET.

  2. “Districts are each organized on the basis of substantial community identity.”    

    Nowhere in the staff report is there more evident bias and antipathy toward Malibu than in this section. The arrogance of this statement borders on the offensive:

    “The County Committee may determine which aspects of community life and description constitute relevant community identity for its review purposes.”

    In other words, what constitutes community identity for the whole of Malibu is less relevant than what the County Committee decides it is? I would hope you recognize how staggeringly presumptuous that sounds. Did any of your staff bother to visit Malibu during this evaluation? To speak with longtime residents? To attend community gatherings or activities? To visit our schools and observe student interaction? From the staff report, it is abundantly clear they did not. That makes their assertions regarding Malibu’s community identity roughly as meaningful as an online medical diagnosis.

    Staff brusquely dismisses our community’s “natural… affinity” by pointing to a formal district relationship some 70-years old, “thus there can be no claim that they are not members of that school district community.” This is a reckless obfuscation. Malibu discontent with district administration was already an open topic of conversation in the 1970s, and serious talk of forming our own school district is at least as old as the fight for Malibu cityhood, which began in 1976.

    At the same time, it is disingenuous to speak of that 70-year continuum as if there were no other mitigating events during the interim. Until 1991, Malibu was an unincorporated part of Los Angeles County. Until 1992, it had no high school of its own. Those two events are not insignificant. It is a matter of public record that formal, organized efforts at forming a Malibu Unified School District began almost immediately once Malibu was a self-governing municipality with a complete K-12 path entirely within its own city limits.

    In light of these facts, staff’s assertion is, in their words, “not supported.” There absolutely is a “claim that they are not members of that school district community” because for the better part of that 70-year relationship we have been unhappy members of that school district community. Why, then, does staff brush aside our longstanding grievances as “not supported”? Does staff mean to tell Malibu parents that their feelings of marginalization and neglect are meaningless and trivial? That the widespread discontent felt across our entire city is “not supported”? Did staff bother to reach out to any such families to gather information that might be supportive? Clearly not, as they undermine their own assertion with this admission: “Additional information will need to be gathered about the access that Malibu-area students have to various school-based and non- school programs if this proposal is moved into the regular review process.”

    Maybe staff should have gathered “additional information” before deciding what was “not supported.”

    Staff further attempts to minimize Malibu’s historic uniqueness and sense of community: “While it is stated that the petitioners and their supporters feel a sense of community identity within Malibu, the region in general shares the same coastline, transportation arteries, commercial, recreational, shopping and entertainment centers and, most importantly, students. It is unrealistic to believe that Malibu residents (and thus Malibu students) never leave Malibu (notwithstanding COVID-19 pandemic restrictions), and vice versa, that residents and students of Santa Monica never partake of recreational, civic, commercial and other offerings in Malibu.”

    Why does staff believe this to be “unrealistic”? Did they poll the two communities? No, they did not. They are projecting general assumptions on a city that has historically prided itself on defying assumptions. The view that any differences between Malibu and Santa Monica are trivial in light of their shared “coastline, transportation arteries, commercial, recreational, shopping and entertainment centers” and “students” is a facile, naive and reductionist view of what constitutes a community. Those of us who proudly subscribe to the mantra that Malibu is “a way of life” object in the most strenuous terms to such a characterization. Malibu is a unique and special place, and anyone who has bothered to spend any amount of time here would know that. Instead, staff resorts to bizarre attempts to analogize SMMUSD to other districts comprised entirely of inland communities with no comparable cultural, historic or geographic characteristics to distinguish them. The truth is there is no analog to SMMUSD — it remains the only non-contiguous district in the state, an awkward amalgamation of a small rural community and a distant, disconnected larger urban community ten times its size and sixteen times its density. Such comparisons are especially fraught in the face of the open hostility directed toward Malibu families and students from their own SMMUSD superintendent and school board during the course of our unification efforts. If the relationship was strained before, it is hopelessly broken now. Santa Monica officials have, in a shockingly short period of time, irreparably ruptured any trust they might have hoped to have with our community. It is a breach so deep, so severe, so rife with dysfunction and open hostility that the only hope for resolution at this stage must be unification. What has been characterized as a divorce has moved well beyond “irreconcilable differences” and into what Malibu would call “domestic abuse.”

    I would use a different analogy: “Educational colonialism.” Prioritizing such trivial characteristics as shared “coastline, transportation arteries, commercial, recreational, shopping and entertainment centers” overlooks our district’s glaring power imbalance and the unique political identities of our two cities.

    It is no secret that Santa Monica is a deeply political city beset by volatile internal politics and political factions. The SMMUSD Board has traditionally been a springboard for larger political aspirations. Previous Board members have gone on to positions on the Santa Monica City Council, the California State Assembly and State Senate. It is silly to pretend the SMMUSD Board is not inextricably tied to the pugilistic machinations of Santa Monica politics, and that those politics are not diametrically opposed to Malibu’s interests. Campaign funding records reveal the same factions responsible for heavily investing in Santa Monica’s city council elections are responsible for the election of the school board majority — factions whose civic priorities have historically been at odds with Malibu’s. Malibu’s inability to secure any kind of ongoing board representation therefore puts its students not just at the mercy of Santa Monica voters, but at the mercy of adverse political interests.

    This incontrovertible fact undermines staff’s assertion that “there is no indication that these differences are damaging to the educational plan of the Santa Monica-Malibu USD.” To the contrary, this profoundly anti-democratic dynamic has been deeply damaging to the educational aspirations of Malibu parents because it has denied them any voice whatsoever in the district responsible for the education of their children. This also undermines staff’s assertion that there is no “need to reconcile these differences by separating groups of students who have been part of the same school district historically, and currently exhibit significant academic success.” The historical enmity of the cities within the district has already been demonstrated, and surely we can agree that there is more to schooling than statistical “academic success.” Democracy matters, local control matters, and being able to have a say in precisely how academic success is achieved matters. 

    Historically, Colonial rule was not resented because it did not bestow prosperity — it frequently afforded colonized peoples great prosperity and opportunities for success. But without self-rule, without the dignity the democratic process bestows, no amount of success or prosperity is meaningful. This current anti-democratic status quo cannot be resolved but through the unification process.

    I cannot move on from this issue, however, without addressing some of staff’s most offensive dismissals, shrugging off the the stated feelings of Malibu families in declaring “their impressions are not determinative here.” Staff is quite literally telling us that we are not what we believe ourselves to be, that our sense of community identity is some kind of delusion, and that they, in their superior wisdom, know what’s best for us. This is precisely the kind of condescension we have long received from Santa Monica administrators and for which we are seeking unification. It is deeply disconcerting to find LACOE staff echoing these sentiments.

    For my part, I can assure you — as a lifelong resident of this community — my affinity for my home town is no delusion. My “impressions” are very much “determinative.” And for the thousands of Malibuites who fought for years to achieve cityhood at great personal expense, you can be sure that their “impressions” are exceedingly “determinative.”

    Elsewhere:

    “The residents living within the proposal area do not evidence greater community identity with the City of Malibu to the degree that they cannot remain a part of the Santa Monica-Malibu USD, specifically because they are residents of both entities equally.”

    Again, as previously established, we are clearly not “residents of both entities equally” when the one is defined by local self-governance and the other is a hostile, anti-democratic entity in which we have no voice.

    “Proximity to school sites does not, in and of itself, establish community identity.”

    This is a rather overt and embarrassing straw man. Malibu never contended that “proximity to school sites” established “community identity.” The contention is that community identity cannot exist where the community is denied a voice in the educations and futures of their children and instead subjected to the whim of another community and its political factions.

    Far from making their case, staff’s colonialist language only reinforces the legitimacy of Malibu’s grievances and their diminished status in this district. Staff’s finding should be that Malibu’s unique and substantial community identity is real, indisputable and adversely impacted by Santa Monica’s heavily politicized and anti-democratic control of the district. For this reason, staff’s finding should be that Malibu’s need for a district of its own based on substantial community identity HAS BEEN MET.


    4.  “The reorganization of the districts will preserve each affected district’s ability to educate students in an integrated environment and will not promote racial or ethnic discrimination or segregation.”

    Staff’s evaluation of this Condition frankly should have ended without any further elaboration as respective student bodies in Malibu and Santa Monica have existed as separate, distinct and discreet bodies for nearly thirty years. Since the establishment of Malibu High School in 1992, Malibu students have followed their K-12 pathway exclusively in Malibu, and Santa Monica students have followed their K-12 pathway exclusively in Santa Monica. The racial, cultural and ethnic makeup of each community’s schools will be precisely the same after unification as it is now. Nothing will change apart from district administration and the aggregated statistics on district makeup.

    Unfortunately, staff here seems more preoccupied with aggregated statistics than on-the-ground reality, incorrectly alleging that unification “would have a discernible impact on the ethnic or racial distribution at both a newly formed Malibu USD and at the resulting Santa Monica USD, as compared to the current composition of the Santa Monica-Malibu USD.” This is simply not factually accurate. There is no “current composition” of the SMMUSD other than on paper. There are two compositions — one in Santa Monica and the other in Malibu. These populations do not interact and will not change following unification. Staff’s contention that with unification “there may be discriminatory impacts on students” is, therefore, false.

    Had staff referenced the 2016 Noguera Report which the district specifically commissioned to address the issue of racial and ethnic disparities in SMMUSD, it would have seen, among seven itemized “distractions” preventing the district from better addressing these disparities, a recognition that “Malibu-Santa Monica tension” and “the ongoing debate over separation, the intense debates that have unfolded over equity in funding and resources, have served as a major source of distraction from district equity efforts.” Unlike LACOE staff’s report, the Noguera Report drew from extensive interviews with district personnel and site visits to its schools, concluding that “Malibu-Santa Monica tension” is both real and an impediment to improved educational outcomes for disadvantaged and minority students. Since 2016, that tension has only worsened and become more of a distraction. It therefore follows that prolonged attempts to prevent or delay Malibu unification will do little but increase the tension between the two cities and further degrade SMMUSD’s efforts to improve educational outcomes for minority students.

    That said, staff’s somewhat arcane perception of Malibu’s racial and ethnic makeup warrants addressing. It is clear from the staff report that staff — like SMMUSD officials in Santa Monica — are subscribing to a largely outdated diversity paradigm. Report’s “Figure 1: Enrollment by Ethnicity” delineates seven racial/ethnic categories which appear stuck in a kind of 1971 vision of racial and ethnic diversity as opposed to the more complex and globalized world of 2021. In point of fact, if staff is concerned with the possibility of “ethnic discrimination or segregation,” they would do well to worry less about district separation and focus more on current Santa Monica schools, notably Santa Monica High School, where racial self-segregation has been a reality since well before I was a student there in the 1980s. Unlike Malibu, Santa Monica has actual segregated ethnic neighborhoods, a lingering problem since at least the 1950s. Malibu, conversely, has never experienced any kind of segregation or self-segregation, either in the schools or in the commuinity generally. Any concerns regarding “promotion of segregation” in a Malibu Unified School District are, therefore, “not supported.” This, again, is in keeping with the observations, conclusions and recommendations of the 2016 Noguera Report.

    Had staff spent any time actually inspecting Malibu schools, rather than simply reading statistical data, they would have seen a snapshot of how people from all backgrounds, nationalities and communities are accepted and absorbed into the Malibu community. A substantial number of our children come from mixed-race homes and at least as many can claim one, and sometimes two immigrant parents. As the son of an immigrant myself, who grew up in a bi-cultural household at a time when it was a rarity in Malibu, I consider that remarkable and praiseworthy progress.

    It is, therefore, a rather peculiar concern on the part of staff that a Malibu Unified School District would “be an entity that is vastly more White than the resulting Santa Monica USD or the current Santa Monica-Malibu USD.” Once again — the racial and ethnic makeup of Malibu’s schools would not change — it would simply not be aggregated into overall district statistics. But “White” is also not a meaningful cultural identity in Malibu. Though we are rural, we are also cosmopolitan, and any racial category which makes no differentiation between immigrants and the native-born, between those of Western European ancestry and those from Eastern or Southern Europe, Central Asia and Asia Minor, North Africa, the Middle East or Iran is fundamentally meaningless in describing the rich diversity of backgrounds which make Malibu the welcoming and embracing community it is. I would remind you that official datasets on racial and ethnic makeup are also notoriously unreliable — skewed first by the categories which social scientists have decided are meaningful, and second by the willingness (or unwillingness) of people, especially those of mixed-race, to subscribe to those categories. I would argue that the more cosmopolitan and welcoming the community, the less meaningful such identities are to both the community and its citizens, and the less willing they will be to furnish accurate data. In other words, you are always going to see more accurate self reported ethnic identity in communities where those identities matter.

    I would invite all of you to pay a visit to our schools, to our ball fields on weekends, to our public parks and parklands to see for yourselves what real diversity looks like. You will see a reality that is very different from official datasets. You will see a community of all colors, backgrounds, religions and nationalities — a community in which differences are simply cosmetic alongside the unique “way of life” we all share.

    Staff understandably assumes that conflict between races and discrimination is the norm because in so many densely-populated, urban areas, it is — and mitigating such conflicts is an essential role of any responsible school district. But, again, Malibu is a unique and special place blessed with conditions that allow us to escape the conflicts which are endemic elsewhere. We don’t need to fix in our children what’s broken in adults.

    I would implore you all to please visit our community, see how we live and raise our children, understand what informs our community character and base your assessments accordingly rather than on cold datasets or media-driven mischaracterizations.

    For this reason, staff should find, incontrovertibly and incontestably, this Condition HAS BEEN MET.



    This community is more than just a geographical place, more than just a place with “proximity to school sites.” The name Malibu, in fact, comes from the name of the ancient Chumash village Himaliwu which means, “Where the surf sounds loudly.” The Chumash already understood they were blessed to reside in a unique and special place, and those of us who have today inherited their stewardship take our calling very seriously. Those who come here from around the world do so to join with us in this task. We welcome them into our fold. Our children are our future — heirs to this stewardship. We respectfully ask that you grant us the dignity of our own local school district in accordance with the city’s detailed proposal for unification available at  Malibucity.org/MUSD so we can make that future possible.