I served on the Santa Monica Malibu Unified School District (SMMUSD) Advisory Committee on Health & Safety for 11 years until my son’s 2011 graduation from Malibu High. That experience prepared me for the recent SMMUSD Board decision to oppose separating Malibu and Santa Monica into two separate school districts. They justified their decision by asserting concern for how this separation would affect all SMMUSD students. Their stated concern for Malibu students is belied by two decades of decisions that consistently disrespected, disenfranchised and disadvantaged Malibu schools, to the detriment of Malibu’s low-income students. Despite the higher cost of recruiting and retaining teachers in Malibu, the district has conveniently assumed that Malibu schools have the same cost of living and commuting expenses as Santa Monica schools, which is laughable, given Malibu’s remoteness and rural character. The predictable result has been markedly lower quality and quantity of science and foreign language classes at Malibu High School compared to Samohi (2000-11). Ten percent of Malibu students (versus 26 percent at Samohi) qualify for government-subsidized school meals. Malibu’s low-income students are the biggest losers in this two-decade pattern of short-changing Malibu schools by the board. The SMMUSD board is happy with the status quo as it permits the funding of science and foreign language enrichment programs at Samohi not available to Malibu High students. The fact that this exploitive position robs Malibu’s low-income students of any practical possibility of preparing for a STEM career does not appear to concern the current board. Why are they so heartless? Because favoring Santa Monica students is the easiest path to reelection; it’s simple math. Malibu voters are only 16 percent of the electorate. It is politically expedient to ignore and denigrate Malibu’s concerns and to use the extra monies derived from underfunding Malibu schools to create enrichment programs for Santa Monica schools, which pleases Santa Monica voters. As we have seen, the only way for Malibu parents to get the SMMUSD board to behave more equitably under the current arrangement is to sue them in court. Separation is the only sustainable and truly equitable solution for Malibu’s low-income students.
William McCarthy