If community talks are successful, Malibu residents can expect Juan Cabrillo Elementary School and Point Dume Marine Science School students to attend the same school by the 2018-19 school year, per Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Board Member Craig Foster.
This follows a Monday morning announcement from SMMUSD stating there would be a meeting regarding the “realignment of Malibu schools” from 6-8 p.m. on Thursday, April 26, at the Point Dume Marine Science Elementary School multipurpose room. The proposed realignment would bring more students to Point Dume from Juan Cabrillo Elementary School.
“There are some ideas being floated out, on combining two of our elementary schools—Point Dume and Juan Cabrillo—at the Point Dume site,” KBU News quoted Malibu High School Principal Dr. Cheli Nye on Friday.
Foster, in a phone call with The Malibu Times, confirmed Nye’s statement.
Of course, moving Juan Cabrillo’s students—194 students in the 2016-17 school year—to Pt. Dume, which enrolled 195 students the same year, would bring a total of more than 300 students to the latter school.
“We don’t want to negatively impact traffic at Point Dume,” Foster said.
He emphasized that community feedback was important, calling it “a collaborative venture that the vast majority can feel like they had a voice in.”
A number of important members in the school community—including school site council teachers, principals and Parent Teacher Association members—met last Wednesday to discuss the realignment. Last Friday, teachers from the two elementary schools were presented with the idea. A meeting was held on Monday, April 23, for Juan Cabrillo parents; another was planned for Pt. Dume parents on Wednesday, April 25.
In a statement to The Malibu Times, Superintendent Dr. Ben Drati said, “ … Realigning the Malibu pathway will give us the opportunity to utilize Cabrillo as part of the MHS campus. This could be to move the middle school there or use as swing space as construction progresses.”
The meetings and announcement come on the heels of the last SMMUSD School Board meeting, where the possibility of tearing down Malibu High completely was discussed. These plans came about following a 2016 court case, where SMMUSD was mandated to replace pre-1979 door and window frames at MHS and Juan Cabrillo Elementary School due to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs)—or cease using the affected buildings completely—by Dec. 31, 2019.
The hope is that, in moving Juan Cabrillo students to Pt. Dume by August of this year, there would be “room for the district to feel comfortable with the deadline,” according to Foster.
If the move is approved, Juan Cabrillo teachers would also move with the students to the new school.
“[We’re] calling it ‘new school’ because it’s not Cabrillo merging into Pt. Dume; it’s forming a new school,” Foster clarified.
Though hesitant to say the move would last indefinitely, he said: “There is absolutely no future prediction that the schools will separate.”
Moreover, there would be no space for Juan Cabrillo students to go back to; there is a tentative plan to have Malibu Middle School students and teachers to move into the Juan Cabrillo school site in 2019.
Drati and Foster will lead the April 26 community meeting, which Pt. Dume residents are encouraged to attend. If unable to attend, visit smmusd.org/superintendent/index.html and select “Malibu pathway realignment” to submit comments/concerns. Information will be posted to the SMMUSD website following the meeting.