The school board last week approved the project to renovate and add to the Malibu Middle and High School campus, despite unmitigable light pollution. Discussion about adding a permanent, nonvoting Malibu member to the board was also postponed.
By Knowles Adkisson / Associate Editor
The Malibu Middle and High School improvement project took another step forward last week when the school district Board of Education certified the Final Environmental Impact Report (FEIR) for the project. The board, which met last Thursday at Malibu City Hall, also delayed until March a decision on whether to add a nonvoting Malibu seat to the board, and initiated a policy change to allow more students from outside Malibu and Santa Monica to attend district schools.
The proposed project includes a new two-story replacement building for classrooms, a library, new administration offices, renovation of an existing classroom building, a new 150-space parking lot and access road, a new drop-off/pick-up lane, two new tennis courts, synthetic turf for the athletic field and improved wastewater systems, according to the City of Malibu website.
The FEIR acknowledged that two “unavoidable significant impacts” would result from the project: construction dust and sky glow from the parking lot and access road. As a result, the district adopted a Statement of Overriding Considerations, which stated that the environmental impacts were acceptable because the project “will provide many generations of students with safe and secure facilities that maximize their learning environment,” according to the staff report.
The project now requires approval from the City of Malibu’s planning commission and city council. Jan Maez, the district’s chief financial officer, expected that approval to be won quickly because the district and the city had been communicating extensively on the project.
Maez estimated the project would take three years to complete once ground is broken. Field lights for the primary Malibu High School athletic field were not included in the project and will have to be approved separately.
Boardmember Ralph Mechur thanked district staff and the Malibu community “for working through some very challenging issues to make this project come to fruition.”
Vote on Malibu school board representative delayed
The board was set to discuss the possibility of adding a permanent, nonvoting Malibu member at the meeting. The item had been placed on the agenda at the request of a growing number of Malibu education activists who say Malibu’s lack of representation on the school board, whose members all live in Santa Monica, has resulted in disenfranchisement of the community.
However, Advocates for Malibu Public Schools (AMPS), a citizen group that seeks an independent Malibu school district, requested the item be postponed until after the board’s March 1 meeting. That’s when county education officials are scheduled to make a presentation outlining the board’s responsibilities if it were to cooperate with an AMPS petition to break the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District (SMMUSD) into two separate districts.
Despite discussion being postponed on the matter, chances that the board would grant the non-voting member appeared slim. Superintendent Sandra Lyon in the staff report cited the district’s legal counsel, who advised that “allowing Malibu, a specific segment of our community, to have a greater influence on elected officials opens the Board of Education to charges of discrimination.”
Lyon instead recommended the board create a new Malibu District Advisory Committee. The committee would be comprised of Malibu residents and would have a district staff liaison and a boardmember liaison, who would then report the concerns of the Malibu committee to the rest of the board.
Out of district permits to increase
The board also initiated a policy change that would allow more students who live outside of Malibu and Santa Monica to attend school in SMMUSD. Boardmember Jose Escarce championed a measure that would increase the number of new interdistrict permits granted for the 2012-13 school year to 300.
Escarce explained that the district receives about $5,300 per year in state funding for each student, based on average daily attendance. With the addition of more students, Escarce estimated the district could add potentially $500,000 per year in additional revenue.
Currently there are about 11,300 students in the district, and Escarce recommended aiming for a figure of 11,500. Students would primarily be taken from the Los Angeles Unified School District, and would be eligible as long as their parents worked within the district lines of SMMUSD.
However, several boardmembers noted the students must be released by their home districts first. That could be difficult, as with the state’s current budget crisis many school districts are attempting to retain their students in order to keep the state funding for attendance.