An independent study school will offer home schooled children help in difficult upper-level classes.
By Hans Laetz / Special to The Malibu Times
The Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District has started a new independent study school on the Malibu High School campus in an effort to bring home-schooled children back to public education.
The one-teacher school, called the Santa Monica Malibu Independent High School, has 12 students and is located in a classroom next to the gymnasium at Malibu High. There, teacher Donald Stern will work with parents and students to design, implement and teach students at home, using state-approved textbooks and curriculum.
SMMUSD Board Member Kathy Wisnicki calls Stern “a renaissance man” who will take over for parents with home-schooled children vexed by difficult upper-level classes, such as trigonometry. Wisnicki, a Malibu resident, was a guiding force in establishing Independent High school.
“I had noticed that the Oak Park School District had brought these kids in under California state standards,” Wisnicki said. “It is an important way to serve families that are already home schooling their children, as it gives them a lot more flexibility and opportunity.”
These students will be allowed to take elective classes at Malibu High, and can participate in extracurricular sports, plays and other activities along with Malibu’s 1,320 students in grades 6-12. One new Independent High student is already playing with the Sharks girls’ tennis team.
Independent High students will take standardized state achievement tests, and their scores will be calculated separately from Malibu High’s. Like all other pupils in California, the state will reimburse the district about $5,400 per attending student per year.
A dozen students make up the inaugural class, and as many as 10 more are in the process of enrolling at the new school, officials said.
Many of Independent High’s inaugural class were attending Renaissance Academy, a charter school that specialized in individualized instruction. When that school ran into real estate difficulties this fall, several students jumped to the new Malibu offering.
One of those is 11th-grader Tommy Biglow, a Point Dume resident who had tried Malibu High and Renaissance before settling at Independent High.
“My son works better in a smaller environment,” Lynne Biglow said. “Some kids get sort of lost in a class of 35 kids.”
Biglow stressed that she does not find Malibu High insufficient or failing, and that her daughter attends traditional classes there. But for her son, the independent approach is what works, she said.
“Even though Malibu High is small, it still has that varsity school atmosphere,” Biglow said. “And a lot of these kids seem to work better at home.”
“Students are choosing this as an alternative format for education,” said Janie Gates, the principal at Olympic High School in Santa Monica who oversees Independent High School.
She said the creation of this school gives children with health issues, who travel for business or family reasons, or other motives an opportunity to study within the public school system, but without attending regular classes.
“Most of these students will not be transferring from Malibu High,” Gates said. “Rather, they are home-schooled children whose parents have made a choice for an alternative format in education.”
Malibu High principal Mark Kelly said the new school could only help parents who “are prepared to spend a considerable amount of time and energy to educate their children at home.
“These children are already in our community, and this just gives them the opportunity to further their education within a public school,” he said.
Home schooling is often used by parents with religious objections to give their children an evolution-free education, or one with a more conservative political base. But Kelly said Malibu’s Independent High School is not a means for parents who seek to substitute the teaching of evolution with religion.
“Our curriculum is guided by the state education codes, and the state education codes say we teach evolution,” Kelly said. “This school is in accordance with California standards.”
Kelly and Gates both said they do not view the home-study alternative as competition to traditional school environments.
“We have a strong curriculum, and a very strong community at Malibu High,” Kelly said. “Malibu High has nothing to worry about.”