Malibu High School principal says evolution of schools focuses need on improvements.
By Nora Fleming / Special to The Malibu Times
Local residents voiced their concerns over lighting, traffic and noise issues with Malibu High School’s Campus Improvements Project, as well as support for campus modernization, at a meeting Monday night to discuss the project.
The project is being funding by the Measure BB Bond Measure that was approved by Malibu and Santa Monica voters in 2006 and provides $268 million to the school district. Of this, $30, 375, 000, was allocated to improving Malibu High School.
The meeting, held at Malibu High School, is part of a series of community meetings for residents to air concerns and/or support for the project; some of these concerns will be examined in the project’s environmental impact report. Four more meetings will take place before a draft EIR is issued for comment in the spring.
Many residents from Morningview Drive, where the school is located, and from nearby Merritt Drive, showed up with worries that their views and property values would diminish with project construction and that new lighting on athletic fields would inhibit the purity of the night sky in their neighborhood. Traffic concerns on Morningview Drive were also emphasized.
“We don’t want to prohibit Friday night football, but we hope that the lighting solution would be less imposing and the least intrusive with a language that restricts when it’s used,” said Malibu Park resident Bob Miller. “If it changes from Friday night football to concerts, it would be a major imposition.”
Miller added, “For years the traffic has been a major, major issue and for a long time the community has tried to address it but it’s fallen on deaf ears. Hopefully through this process, you will realize what a big safety issue it is.”
Miller, a member of the Malibu Park Safety Coalition, had also spoken on the traffic safety issue at the Public Safety Commission meeting Wednesday night.
The project will restructure the layout of the campus, moving the administration buildings to the front of the campus and the library closer to students. A new library will be built, a new two-story structure housing classrooms, a career center and a multimedia space.
Several new classrooms will be built, in addition to modernizing others, like the science lab classrooms. The high school commons will be restored and the middle school commons modernized. An additional parking lot will be added as well as a reconfiguration of the existing one. Athletic fields will be upgraded, tennis courts built and permanent bleachers and lighting added.
Judi Hutchinson, a Malibu Park resident, said the school has been in the violation of a Coastal Commission agreement on lighting for years and will continue to violate it with the new construction. She said she was dismayed that the school had been unwilling to work with the community.
School Principal Mark Kelly said he disagreed and hoped the high school would continue to work with residents, and that the project was more focused around upgrading and modernizing the school than expanding it.
“The school has evolved over time,” Kelly said. “We wouldn’t have anticipated where we are today when we started, but we have to adapt to where we have evolved to and meet our current needs as well as balance community interests.”
Kelly said high school and middle school programs required more distinction and separation, and classrooms needed to be better equipped with the latest technology. Kelly added that supply closets and storage rooms, or rooms not intended for classrooms, had been converted into classrooms under the current design, and supported the needed for a restructuring of the campus.
Other residents were excited by the prospects for the new campus, hoping that permanent lighting and improved athletic fields would allow other sports, such as lacrosse and soccer, to have evening games and that the modernization of the campus would bring the school up to par with area private schools.
“Everyone has a dog in this fight,” said resident Marshall Thompson. “We need to find an equitable solution and remember that people who are concerned about lights are not anti-kid. I hope we can march ahead and have an adequate sports program and maintain a night sky for children,” he added.
The next outreach meeting will take place on Dec. 15 at Malibu High and will focus on traffic and parking issues related to the improvements project.