The city’s council members are still asking for transparency regarding the school
district’s financial dealings.
By Jonathan Friedman / Assistant Editor
Unable to agree on how to ensure that the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District improve on its alleged lack of financial transparency, the Santa Monica City Council last Thursday did not approve the city staff-recommended $750,000 funding increase for the district. The council did vote to raise the annual $6.5 million donation by $220,000 to cover inflation, but the remaining $530,000 will be put on hold in a special fund until at least a majority of the council can come to an agreement.
The argument among the council members involved the district’s use of confidentiality agreements. Several council members have already made it clear several times this year that they are troubled by a resignation agreement the SMMUSD signed with former Chief Financial Officer Winston Braham stating he could not speak to a third party about the district’s finances. But another type of confidentiality agreement that bothered at least two council members during last Thursday’s meeting involved those signed with parents of special education students. Several parents testified at the meeting that they had to sign the agreements before their children would receive the extra help.
“Parents not only live in fear of losing the services for their children because of an inadvertent slip of the tongue, but we as a community have no access to the financial records and no idea how many dollars are being spent because of these agreements,” said Santa Monica special education parent Tricia Crane.
Mayor Pro Tem Herb Katz and Councilmember Bobby Shriver said they would only support the funding increase if the district agreed to immediately end all “gag orders.” Mayor Richard Bloom and Councilmember Ken Genser supported a lighter request of asking the district to work to “achieve transparency.” Katz said that wasn’t good enough.
“These parents shouldn’t live in fear, no parent should live in fear,” said Katz, who said he was the parent of special education students more than 30 years ago. “And no student should live in fear, for any reason. The fact that we have a great school district, and we do, [is good]. We have a glitch. And that glitch has to be changed in my opinion.”
School Board President Kathy Wisnicki, a Malibu resident, who attended the meeting, told the council that the agreements with parents are necessary because each education plan is different for each student. The confidentiality, she argued, prevents parents from trying to compare what their child is receiving to another, when the comparison might not be valid. She said the agreements are also resolutions that prevent the student’s education plan from going to court.
Genser said he could not support telling the district to stop the confidentiality agreements with parents.
“Do I think from what I know now that they should be rescinded? Yeah,” Genser said. “But I don’t think I have enough information with definitiveness to make that decision for the district. And I think it’s moving too far aside from issues that are related to the financial transparency issue. There may be good reasons that we don’t know about yet [to have the agreements]. Or there may be ways to have these agreements in a slightly different context to have these people feel more comfortable and less threatened.”
The Braham matter, which has been an issue of controversy for several months, took second stage to the parent agreements. But it was not left out of the conversation. The confidentiality agreement with Braham, who resigned in November following a disagreement with Superintendent Dianne Talarico over a proposed salary hike for teachers, had been amended this month by the school district to allow Braham to speak with the Santa Monica City Council, as some of its members had requested. But Braham recently told the Santa Monica news Web Site, the Lookout, that the new language was not good enough because it still did not allow him to speak freely, in his opinion.
Councilmember Shriver said at Thursday’s meeting, “If this were a public company issuing securities and there were such a restriction on the prior CFO of the company, I have a pretty good feeling the SEC would not allow those securities to be sold. I just honestly don’t understand why it is that whatever this gentleman has to say or not say cannot be allowed in a public policy process.”
Genser and Bloom both said the Braham confidentiality cause was not a good decision by the district, but they said they were not too troubled by it because several government and private agencies had reviewed the SMMUSD’s financial status since Braham’s resignation.
“I don’t think we have anything to worry about regarding the financial openness of the district at this time,” Genser said.
There are seven members on the Santa Monica City Council. One, Kevin McKeown, cannot vote on this issue because he works for the district. At least four council members must agree on how to proceed before the SMMUSD can receive the extra money. The council voted last Thursday on the two conflicting proposals, with each receiving three votes. No date was set on when the council would take up the matter again.