Hubbub surrounding school district separation may have died down in the past several months, but the Malibu Unified Negotiations Committee has quietly continued its work toward ironing out what an independent Malibu school district will look like.
According to Malibu City Council Member Laura Rosenthal, who sits on the negotiation committee and has been instrumental in district separation since early talks began years ago, the group has set a goal of Jan. 1 for negotiations to complete.
“We’re almost done,” Rosenthal told The Malibu Times before the start of the Dec. 6 meeting. “It’s going well.”
The committee, comprised of six members — three representing Malibu and three representing Santa Monica — got off to a rocky start, with one Malibu member making waves as he filed a voting rights lawsuit against the City of Santa Monica in April.
Since the summer — and that member’s replacement on the committee — the group has been rolling toward what some have said is an inevitable split between Santa Monica and Malibu.
“It was going well at the beginning, and then we had that blip, and since then, it’s been going very well,” Rosenthal said. “We’re all respectful of each other — we all like each other. Our disagreements have not impacted those two things, and I feel we all have the same goal, which is to get to an agreement.”
According to information published online by AMPS — Advocates for Malibu Public Schools — the group originally scheduled an additional public meeting for this coming Saturday, Dec. 10, in an effort to expedite the process.
“MUNC (the separation committee) is collaborating very efficiently with a shared desire of finalizing negotiations before year end,” the post reads. “To help in this, an extra meeting has been scheduled for Saturday, Dec. 10, 2016 in addition to the regular Tuesday meetings.”
Rosenthal said the Saturday meeting may not be necessary, and two additional meetings remain in 2016 — Dec. 13 in Malibu and Dec. 30 in Santa Monica. The meeting was eventually deemed unnecessary.
The largest sticking point for the two groups, Rosenthal said, was a formula for splitting finances, including parcel taxes, bonds, city contributions and revenue from the State of California.
“I think the issue we’ve been spending the longest amount of time on is a formula,” Rosenthal explained. “The formula really looks at the difference between if we stayed together as a district and we got X-amount of money each year, per student, let’s say, as opposed to splitting … It’s looking at what that formula might be, when that formula might take effect, for how long, et cetera.”
The formula, committee members have mentioned, would likely see Malibu providing funds to Santa Monica — possibly tens of millions of dollars — to help ease the transition into its own district.
With less than one month remaining in 2016, the formula and other negotiations — which Rosenthal warned would be “very complicated” — are close to being done, at which point the final compromise will go before the school board at a public meeting. Rosenthal said there may also be an informational meeting held in Malibu to educate voters, who will eventually see the separation on a ballot. Malibu voters will need to approve a parcel tax — which experts say won’t increase overall tax rates — by a two-thirds majority.