Malibu desires its personal college district, however separating from Santa Monica may require “upkeep”
The city of Malibu turns 25 this month, and the leaders of the famous 21-mile stretch of coast have a birthday wish: a school district of their own.
Malibu has spent years trying to break away from the school district it shares with Santa Monica, its relatively upscale – if not Malibu-rich – neighbor to the south.
Now the residents are closer to a separation than ever before. They collected the necessary signatures to propose the split and convinced the school district to appoint a committee that would negotiate a separation.
But when representatives from both cities met this week to iron out the logistics for such negotiations, it became clear that the decoupling of the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District could lead to high-priced, detailed litigation that could result in any stormy, high-profile divorce.
The district’s latest projections show that if such a breakup occurs, Santa Monica students would be the financial losers. It would get about $ 9,500 per student, which would be less than if the district stayed whole.
Malibu, which has three elementary schools and one high school, would receive nearly $ 14,000 per student through 2017-18, district estimates show.
School board president Laurie Lieberman said the two sides want to reach an agreement that would allow Malibu to secede, but that it cannot do so at the expense of the Santa Monica children.
“We exist to serve all of our students, and we can’t very well say, ‘You want to be your own school district for your own reasons … and we will support this to the detriment of the remaining students,'” Lieberman said.
The threat of education secession has emerged in cities like Dallas and Memphis, but the proposed split in Southern California is unusual as there are two affluent beach communities in a high-performing school district.
In this case, Malibu is the richer spouse with a median income of more than $ 130,000 a year, almost twice the average income power of a Santa Monica household.
Most of the students in Malibu are white and only about 11% are poor.
Schools in Santa Monica are more diverse, and about 30% of students come from disadvantaged families.
Santa Monica shouldn’t be confused with a poor city. The prosperity in both cities far exceeds the district average, which shows that two thirds of the students are poor.
Still, Malibu Mayor Laura Rosenthal said the city’s differences deserve a split.
Rosenthal describes Malibu as a tightly knit rural community that handles the transportation of students living up to 20 miles from the nearest school and has environmental concerns about land use in an area known for its scenic vistas.
On the flip side, she said, Santa Monica is urban and needs to focus on building its education system to serve larger campuses with a greater concentration of children in poverty.
“The district spends a lot of time and energy addressing issues in Malibu that should rightly be addressed in Santa Monica,” said Rosenthal. “You have many educational challenges that we don’t have and vice versa.”
Over the years, Malibu has compiled a long list of complaints against the 11,000 student district.
Malibu residents complain that they are not represented in a district where more than 80% of Santa Monica students are from.
They are still reluctant that the district and county rejected their attempt to convert Point Dume Elementary School into a charter.
Many argue that the district has not done enough to remove polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs found in some Malibu schools.
And parents were upset years ago after the district banned PTA groups from raising funds to hire staff, including teacher assistants, at individual schools.
Before the policy was passed, some schools, particularly in Malibu, raised up to $ 2,000 per student while others raised less than $ 100 per child.
Lori Whitesell, a parent of two children at Santa Monica High School, is defending the decision to put most of the parent-raised money into a district-wide pot that will then be more evenly distributed among all schools.
“Every child’s experience, regardless of which school they attend, should be comparable. It shouldn’t matter if your child goes to school in Malibu or Santa Monica, ”said Whitesell.
Negotiating a breakup won’t be easy.
A committee made up of the Mayor of Malibu, two attorneys, and members of the district’s financial oversight committee must figure out how to keep Santa Monica students from being severely underserved by the deal, how to split bonds and Santa Monica from litigation exempt claims the district improperly removed pollutants from some Malibu schools.
A Malibu-Santa Monica deal could help in the year-long independence process, but it doesn’t guarantee.
Such a split requires the approval of the county and state education departments and must be presented to the electorate for the final blessing.
Some California districts have successfully divided, but many have failed.
For example, in the early 1990s, voters in three South Bay cities – Manhattan Beach, Redondo Beach, and Hermosa Beach – voted to reorganize.
The city of Carson, on the other hand, jumped through various procedural hurdles in its attempt to separate from the Los Angeles Unified School District, only to have its plan rejected by voters in 2001.
Malibu residents say they will keep moving forward. They even proposed working out an agreement under which Malibu would pay millions of dollars in losses that the split could cost Santa Monica.
“A member of the school board literally shouted, ‘We want maintenance,’ in a meeting,” said Craig Foster, the only Malibu resident on the school board. “So we try to provide them with a livelihood so that we can start our new life again.”
zahira.torres@latimes.com
Twitter: @zahiratorres
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