The number of reported child abuse cases within the local school district increased by more than fifty percent. District officials say “heightened awareness” could be attributed to the increase.
By Jonathan Friedman / Special to The Malibu Times
The number of reported cases of child abuse in the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District jumped from 77 in the 2007-08 school year to 123 in 2008-09, according to the Annual Child Abuse Report that the Board of Education reviewed at its meeting last week. One of the cases involved a district employee.
District Deputy Superintendent Mike Matthews said in an interview after the meeting that “heightened awareness” by teachers and other district staff who work directly with students could be the reason for the increase.
“It could be any variety of factors,” Matthews said. “I know one change is we did revise the [child abuse reporting] policy and retrain our staff to abide by the new policy.”
The policy was revised last year following the arrest of a longtime teacher at Lincoln Middle School in Santa Monica on sexual molestation charges. Thomas Beltran pleaded guilty to 10 counts of child molestation in December and is currently serving a 14-year prison sentence without the possibility of parole.
A feature of the updated policy is that district staff must prepare a document every fall for the Board of Education listing the number of reported cases of child abuse during the previous school year. The district has kept track of reported child abuse numbers in prior years, but the information had never before been presented to the Board of Education in a formal document.
The suspected abuses were of alleged incidents that took place away from school, except for the one involving a district employee. Teachers and other SMMUSD employees who work directly with children are supposed to report suspected cases to law enforcement or county child welfare officials within 24 hours. The employees are not supposed to investigate the matters on their own. The district does not keep official statistics on what happens with the allegations after they are reported.
The report broke down the allegations by type and school level. The most reported cases involved elementary school children (52). Thirty-seven involved middle school students and 34 were regarding high school students. There were no reported cases from the preschool or after-school programs. Physical abuse was the most reported, with 77 cases. Twenty reports involved emotional abuse, 15 were about “general neglect” and 11 involved sexual abuse.
Board members did not comment on the report.
Equity Fund debated
The board last week also debated various issues involving the district’s Equity Fund program. Created in 2004, the program requires 15 percent of all money raised by schools and the district as a whole that comes from donations to be placed into a fund. Some kinds of donations are exempt. Most of the fund money is distributed to the various SMMUSD schools based on a formula allowing those with more struggling students to receive a larger share. A small percentage of the fund is supposed to be designated for district-wide programs.
District staff had proposed that $95,000 of the nearly $444,000 in the fund go toward six supposed district-wide programs, including two that are only used by Santa Monica students: Young Collegians, which assists potential first generation collegians, and Connect for Success, which helps rising ninth-graders who have struggled in middle school.
Board President Ralph Mechur and Board member Kelly Pye refused to support Equity Fund money for these programs because they take place at Santa Monica High School and are not used by any Malibu students.
“We have to allocate it as we explained to people and promised people we would,” Pye said. “I want people to have confidence throughout the district that we are looking at district-wide initiatives.”
Mechur and Pye said they support both programs, but felt financial support for them should come from the district’s general fund. The duo’s dissension proved crucial because since there were only five people at the meeting, the measure received just three votes of support. According to board rules, an item must get four votes to pass.
Board member Oscar de la Torre, who noted Malibu students could use the programs in question if they needed them, said it was crucial to fund these programs that are supposed to address what he called “an incredible crisis.” He cited statistics showing that black and Latino students at Santa Monica High overall did poorly in state testing.
“Anything we can do to target the resources to students of greatest need, I think is going to be a smart thing,” he said. “That’s why the Equity Fund was developed.”
Although district officials said money could possibly be found elsewhere to fund the programs, de la Torre insisted it was essential to support them through the Equity Fund, because they were the types of programs for which the fund was created.
The issue of how to spend the money allocated for district-wide programs as well as the $288,000 slated for the various schools will return to the board for a vote at its Oct. 15 meeting. An additional $60,000 is proposed to remain in a reserve.
The available money in this year’s fund is nearly $80,000 more than the total in 2008-09. This increase can be attributed to $80,000 being unspent last year and being forwarded to the 2009-10 fund. Plus, there were no contributions to the fund last year from Malibu High School, Point Dume Elementary and Webster Elementary. Their failure to contribute, Mechur said, was, among other reasons, due to a concern about disorganization at Santa Monica High.
Officials from those schools say their contributions this year include money that should have been submitted last year. Several board members said it is expected those schools will be adding even more money to the pot prior to the next board meeting.
Mechur said he would be meeting with PTA and administrative officials at the various school sites to discuss the program. “We have to get everybody back on the same [page] that this is good for the district,” Mechur said. He also wants the board to discuss the various issues regarding the Equity Fund at a future meeting.
De la Torre added, “We have to ensure that everybody participates, that everybody pays into it [the Equity Fund]. Because that’s the only way this works.”