No, Connie Jenkins… It’s not Pete Lippman who’s wrong about the problems with our school district-it’s you. You claim the years Lippman spent in SMMUSD were “riven by … parents unhappy with the conservative cut-cut-cut approach to budget problems.” That’s funny, because I was a student during those years and I don’t recall parents or students being unhappy with anything other than egregiously wasteful spending on things like refurbishing classrooms that didn’t need it. As a student at Santa Monica High School during those years I was already shocked by misplaced priorities, particularly “mandatory pep rallies” that preempted valuable classes in favor of cheering on a football team many of us had absolutely no interest in.
I would have loved to see more money in the classroom, directed to teachers and students; more money put toward preparing students for college. But other expenditures-always superfluous-took priority. Even then we knew it wasn’t about education-it was about administrators and school board members approving projects they could put on a resume or a reelection flyer.
And how dare you brag about the passing of the state’s largest parcel tax-a school district that needs to tax its residents more than any other district in the state to achieve the same goals is, by any definition, a disgraceful failure.
So please spare us the refrain about California underfunding public education since the ’60s. The problems I witnessed in the ’80s, and which I still witness, have nothing to do with underfunding and everything to do with a weak curriculum and a general unwillingness by administrators, teachers and parents to demand more of students. That’s not a question of money, but of will.
Malibu needs to rid itself once and for all of Santa Monica’s soggy baggage and form its own school district. Their culture and ours are not the same. It took scarcely a decade for us to push Malibu High past century-old Santa Monica High in achievement levels. Just imagine how we’d do once we’re unchained from Santa Monica’s dysfunctional bureaucracy.
Wade Major