Moratorium placed on interdistrict school permits to make room for Malibu growth

0
302

New policy allows those already on permit to stay and others will still be able to apply.

By Sylvie Belmond/Special to The Malibu Times

The Board of Education of the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District recently adopted a new policy that places a one-year moratorium on accepting new inter-district permits in order to ease overcrowding of local schools.

But children who already attend local schools on a permit will be allowed to continue, and school district employees as well as Malibu city employees will still be able to apply for new permits.

However, the ripple effects of this new restriction could be greater than expected for some.

Walter Rosenthal, a member of the school district’s financial oversight committee, explained why this change was needed in Malibu.

“The simple issue is that we are at capacity in Malibu,” he said. “If new people move into the city, they can’t have their children go to school here.”

Currently, a total of 285 students attend Malibu schools on interdistrict permits. The total local school population is 2,703.

Superintendent John Deasy and the school board made the decision in an effort to reduce class sizes to a level consistent with good education practices, noted Rosenthal.

“We are running out of space,” he said. “It’s a policy decision, not an educational decision.”

Bonnie Thoreson, a Malibu High School teacher who teaches 9th and 10th grades, is not so sure about the idea of a moratorium on permits.

“The moratorium was never presented to teachers as a matter of discussion,” she said. “It’s odd how it came out. This matter was not presented to the community but it affects people’s lives in the long run.”

Citing one reason for her opposition, Thoreson indicated that some of the diversity at Malibu High comes from permits, bringing a healthy balance to the student population.

Rosenthal agreed that this is a good argument.

“Diversity clearly was the idea many years ago. But the problem today is less one of who would benefit, rather, it’s what will we do to accommodate the new people in Malibu,” he said.

Even if schools still have space today, class size reduction and budgetary limitations have an impact. He noted the district does not have the funds to provide more teachers to accommodate more students.

Rosenthal said the superintendent wants to keep the same number of teachers but hopes to cut class size, reducing overcrowding of classrooms.

The small size and quality of local schools has long been an attraction for many parents who work but do not live in Malibu.

But the moratorium could impact large employers like Pepperdine University and the Malibu Bay Company because Malibu schools could no longer be promoted as an extra perk for employees and their children.

“What’s going to overcrowd our high school is not just the turnover of homes and [addition of] new homes, but it would be the development of the Civic Center and the notion that every employee who comes to work in Malibu can send their kids to our schools,” said Rosenthal.

“I feel that permits should be viewed as school district assets. Permits, from here forward, because of lack of capacity, should be issued very carefully,” he said.

The district could use the permits as a leverage tool, explained Rosenthal.

Large institutions and companies could provide financial cooperation or facilities cooperation in exchange for issuance of permits to their employees, suggests Rosenthal.

But Carin Chapin, public relations representative for Pepperdine, said the university does not use the interdistrict permit option as a recruitment tool for its faculty or staff members.

“Although some use the permits, they use it as an option,” she said. “But many of the faculty members at Pepperdine live in Malibu.”

However, Chapin could not provide specifics regarding the number of employees at Pepperdine who use the option. The Malibu Bay Company was unavailable to comment.

Individual employees working for Malibu households who want to use the permits in the future will also be impacted by the moratorium.

Again, Rosenthal offered a solution to the dilemma. “Instead of using the permits as a leverage for low wages, the employers should pay their employees fair wages to help them out,” he said.

But in the end, nothing is written in stone and the interdistrict permit policy is to be reviewed every six months by the district.

If the school district does not figure out how to solve its financial problems, the permits may be beneficial because they bring in funds from the state for each of the students who attend the district’s schools.

“I hope we can sustain the moratorium policy,” Deasy stated in a phone interview, “however, given the current state of the budget, it may not be possible.”