The district Board of Education heard last Thursday from a county education official on what it would take to break the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District into separate districts, but opted to study the implications before agreeing to work with Malibu activists.
By Knowles Adkisson / Associate Editor
The school district Board of Education last week postponed a decision on whether to begin a formal exploration with Malibu education activists into forming its own school district until it could first conduct its own research.
After a county education official explained the convoluted process governing how Malibu could separate from Santa Monica, a process peculiarly referred to as “unification,” Malibu Mayor Laura Rosenthal implored the board to begin working with herself and parent group Advocates for Malibu Public Schools (AMPS) to find out if the financial resources and political will existed for the two communities to part ways.
Rosenthal, who with Mayor Pro Tem Lou La Monte represents the City of Malibu as a Council subcommittee that has been working together with AMPS, said that private Malibu donors had already pledged to pay for polls and financial studies of Santa Monica and Malibu to determine if both communities could support the breakup. However, she said the Malibu groups needed an assurance from the board that it would appoint a subcommittee of boardmembers to work with Malibu cooperatively.
“We will provide the money to do these studies,” Rosenthal said. “You would understand our reluctance to raise the money and spend it if you’re not going to work with us.”
But district staff warned the board against agreeing to work collaboratively until it knew exactly what it was getting into.
“What we’re concerned about, and I’ve expressed that to Dr. Rosenthal, is we don’t want to seem to be in support of something that we have no idea if it leaves the remaining district whole,” superintendent Sandra Lyon said. “And I think I have great concerns about that.”
Rosenthal responded that the board would not be indicating support or opposition to Malibu’s separation by agreeing to work with herself and AMPS. She said “we don’t know what we’ll find” in the studies, and that the board’s agreement was simply a starting point to explore the issue.
But Jan Maez, the district’s chief financial officer, said it was important the district have its own information before making that choice. Relying on AMPS, which was approaching the issue from a different perspective than the district, could be problematic, she said.
“I don’t think that the district and AMPS are going into that kind of analysis with the same motivations. I think the district’s motivation would be to gather information to figure what the real impacts would be, and then to make a determination of support or not support.
“Clearly, AMPS’ motivation [is] to bring forward this position and petition and be able to unify into their own district, not that that’s wrong, I’m not placing a value on it, but putting together a subcommittee to do analysis, I think that there’s some steep conflicts in that and I see difficulty in doing that,” Maez said.
That didn’t concern board member Jose Escarce, who felt it was clear that soliciting information would not imply support of an independent Malibu school district.
“The only thing that we can do without information is stay neutral or oppose this on principle,” Escarce said.
But a majority of the board disagreed. Boardmember Oscar de la Torre said he understood the Malibu community’s frustration with a lack of representation on the school board, but said the issue should hinge only on the quality of the education for students in both districts.
“Quality of education isn’t the thrust of this conversation,” de la Torre said. “I understand political self-determination, but we need preliminary information that we don’t have now.”
Instead, staff will solicit a scope of work from consulting firm School Services of California to determine what analysis of each community is needed in terms of financial and political concerns. Staff will report back at the board’s March 15 meeting.
The board earlier heard from Matt Spies, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE), on how the process of “unification” works. Spies said applications for unification first go to LACOE’s Committee on Reorganization. The 11-member committee would perform feasibility study based on nine different criteria to determine if separation was warranted. Key among those factors is whether the quality of education in both communities would improve, and whether either school district would suffer financially.
The chances of success rise if both communities are in support of the separation. However, even if Malibu and Santa Monica successfully argue on each of the nine criteria, the committee still has the discretion to deny the application if it chooses.
If the county committee approves the application, it would then have to be approved by the state Department of Education. That could take time, and the standard of proof would likely be higher there. If given approval at the state level, the “unification” will be placed on the ballot in Santa Monica and Malibu in the next election, and must be approved in an election.
Splitting into separate districts would have serious impacts on both Malibu and Santa Monica, Spies said.
Spies said that upon separating, Malibu would immediately lose its share of proceeds from the Measure R parcel tax passed in 2008, which generates approximately $10 million annually. That revenue would have to be accounted for and made up if Malibu was to successfully operate its own school district.
The departure of Malibu would also release it from having to pay its share of payments on Measure BB, the $268 million bond measure passed in 2006. Although that measure was passed by both communities, the burden of those costs would fall instead on the City of Santa Monica, which could raise problems.