I recently received a request from the SMMUSD sent to Santa Monica and Malibu parents for $2 million in donations, which I found insulting in light of the SMMUSD’s irresponsible spending of over $5 million in the past 18 months on the MHS/JCE PCB contamination issue, with not a single PCB remediated to date.
If the SMMUSD did not waste over $5 million on “not addressing” the PCB problem at MHS/JCE, but instead handled it in a fiscally responsible way, they would have resources to fund key programs, and not make parents in the district feel guilty, pressured and/or blackmailed to donate with the threat of key enrichment programs being cut that the SMMUSD could afford if they were carefully managing the district’s (e.g. our taxpayer’s) dollars.
The SMMUSD should stop threatening to cut key enrichment programs while syphoning money from the general fund earmarked for such programs to pay for their own liability protection and PR.
From a financial perspective, the SMMUSD should fire Pillsbury, Environ and their PR firms and use money more wisely. At this point, they could have used the $5 million to pay for full source testing and remediation at MHS/JCE, the enrichment programs and more.
Parents will be more inclined to donate if the SMMUSD was both fiscally responsible and took the utmost in precaution to put children’s health and safety first. Recent horrific test results at MHS/JCE were provided by the SMMUSD (PCBs as high as 570,000 ppm when only 50 ppm is in violation of federal law!)
The SMMUSD should emulate fiscally responsible school districts, like Clark School in Hartford, CT. Very recently at Clark School, they found lower levels of source PCBs than at MHS/JCE, closed the school, tested/identified PCB source contamination, and put out a remediation plan to bid, all for only $40,000 and in 60 days. The SMMUSD should immediately emulate this fiscally responsible school, spend money more wisely and fully ensure our precious children are safe.
Beth Lucas