The next Advocates for Malibu Public Schools (AMPS) meeting will be held on Wednesday, Dec 14th between 12:30 and 2:30 pm in the “Community Room” of Malibu City Hall. On the agenda will be discussions of both districtwide fundraising and district separation. Please join us!
Monthly Archives: December 2011
School Board Shoots Self in Foot by Bill Bauer
December 05, 2011
As expected, the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Board of Education voted 6-0 last Tuesday night to curtail the raising and spending of funds by school donors and PTA groups on their neighborhood schools.
The move is supposed to narrow the achievement gap by centralizing donations and spreading them more equally among the district’s schools. There is already heavy fallout from the decision.
Aside from being generally divisive, the new policy has resulted in accelerated efforts by Malibu residents to form their own school district. The lack of a Malibuite on the current school board (whose members are elected districtwide by popular vote dominated by Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights-backed candidates) is also a sore point.
Last Monday night, Malibu’s City Council unanimously initiated the process that could lead to secession from the SMMUSD and the formation of a new Malibu school district.
To read more, go here.
Editorial Cartoon: The Malibu Surfside News
To see the original, go here.
Editorial: Time for Transparency
Pursuing a feasibility analysis of what is involved in the secession of Malibu from the SMMUSD school dis- trict is a long overdue opportunity to pierce the veil of secrecy that surrounds the district’s bureaucratic pro- cesses. Even if it turns out that a separate Malibu school district might not be viable in this era of fiscal uncertain- ty, governmental obfuscation, and the labyrinth of state and federal regulations that take much education policy- making out of local hands, the information will be in- valuable to Malibu, as well as Santa Monica.
Few governing entities appear to be as public phobic and media averse as the SMMUSD. Basic data is virtu- ally impossible to obtain. Need numbers? “How many Malibu students go to Samohi?—Our computer system can’t do that.” “How much Title One and other funding goes to which school?—That’s too difficult to break down.” “Can I get a copy of these statistics?—We’ll try to get it done in a few weeks,” etc.
At the newspaper office, we have a running joke that new SMMUSD superintendents—or at least the last three—were required to solemnly pledge not to discuss anything with the media that is the least bit negative or might reflect adversely on the system. Leave them a message or send an email about a major public concern and no response will be forthcoming. The district thinks that cheerleaders should do education news reporting.
Going the county petition route may finally mean that financial data for the individual schools and the district, as a whole, will become available. It is impossible to understand current district policy without this, let alone consider a major move such as forming a separate Mali- bu district. Only then can the prevailing mythology— “Malibu doesn’t get its fair share;” “Title One dollars are as much, or more, than private donations;” and “Well-heeled parents don’t mean better students,” etc.— be proved or disproved.
To read more, go here.
From the Publisher / Arnold G. York
The Malibu City Council has decided to investigate the possibility of Malibu forming its own separate school district. Currently, Malibu students make up about 20% of the student population of the school district. However, because school board members are elected systemwide, there has been no Malibu representative on the school board since 2008 because the overwhelming majority of the voting population is in Santa Monica. As a practical matter, the Santa Monica Renters Rights political organization has long held sway over SM politics, which means that most political decisions are made in SM with little more than lip service to Malibu.
A number of the current school board members don’t seem terribly disturbed at the prospect of Malibu leaving. I suspect that may be because Santa Monica gives, through a variety of means, $13.5 million to the school system every year, and it may well be that Malibu directly or indirectly gets 20% of those dollars, roughly $2.7 million. There is some substantial debate about the numbers and we probably won’t have any definitive answers until after the study of the school district’s finances is completed. By then we will know if a separate Malibu School District is viable, or what kind of money we will have to raise, probably via a parcel tax to make it work. Schools are more than just about educating children, although that is the major priority. Schools are among the largest community organizations in the city and bring many parents into contact with other parents and into the city’s political process. It’s one way people integrate themselves into the community. Good schools are also inextricably tied into property values. For many people, buying in Malibu means that they can avoid the cost of private schools for the kids and instead spend the extra dollars on a house.
To read more, go here.
LAUSD & UTLA Agreement To Give Autonomy To Individual Schools And Put A Moratorium On Charter Schools
The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) and the teachers’ union, United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), which have often been at odds, have reached a tentative agreement that grants more autonomy to individual schools and puts a three-year moratorium on charter take-overs of district schools.
The first part of the deal responds to years of schools complaining that they’re not able to make the changes that are best for their individual campuses. If teachers ratify the deal, school administrators would be able to choose their own teachers, teaching materials and assessments, budget breakdowns, schedules and school rules.
The deal would take significant veto power away from both LAUSD and UTLA. As the Los Angeles Times reports, “If they [schools] wanted to diverge from policies of L.A. Unified, officials could not say no, provided that all laws and legal requirements are honored. If staffers at a school wanted to void portions of the thick union contract, United Teachers Los Angeles could not stop them.”
In a UTLA press release, UTLA President Warren Fletcher explained the rationale behind granting this autonomy: “Schools have functioned too long in an environment where decisions are made by others about what is best for them, rather than by those who are at the school site and familiar with their school’s needs.” LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy echoed the same sentiment, telling the Huffington Post, “A one-size-fits-all model does not work for the district’s different schools. Let’s unleash the creativity of the parents and teachers who know best.”
The second part of the deal puts a three-year moratorium on the Public School Choice policy that allows charter and nonprofit organizations to take over low-performing and new campuses. This is a big win for UTLA, which has never been happy about charter schools, which are non-union, displacing UTLA teachers at district schools.
Allison Bajracharya, a managing director for the California Charter Schools Assn., responded to the LA Times, “It’s disappointing on many levels. We embraced Public School Choice as a reform initiative that could systemically change academic outcomes for students in Los Angeles. And one of the reasons it has been effective to date is because of the competition that came from these external operators.”
In response to the moratorium on charter school take-overs, LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy told the Huffington Post, “Charters alone cannot transform this district. We have got to work internally to transform the district.”
The deal must go through a several-day UTLA process and vote, with results expected by Dec. 12.
Santa Monica – Malibu School Board Approves Controversial Gift Policy by Jason Islas
December 1, 2011 — The Santa Monica-Malibu School Board voted unanimously to move forward with their controversial district-wide fundraising policy at a tense meeting Tuesday night.
The School Board decided to develop a centralized fundraising plan that would bar Parent-Teacher Associations (PTAs) from raising money to pay for teachers or other personnel as well as “premium programs” at specific schools. Instead, the board will create a centralized organization that will pool the money and redistribute it amongst all the schools in the district.
It will not affect donations for school supplies or other materials, like computers. PTAs can still raise money for field trips, as well, according to Board member Ben Allen.
“My job is to ensure that all students in our district have equitable access,” said Superintendent Sandra Lyon Tuesday.
Changing the board policy is just about changing the direction and “painting with broad strokes,” Superintendent Sandra Lyon said Tuesday. The actual rules – and details – would have to be established by an administrative regulation.
The initial step would be to form a Superintendent’s Advisory Group made up of 30 representatives of various groups in the community, including PTA Council members and members of the African American Parent Student Staff Support Group, to better flesh out the details of the plan, including what constitutes a “premium program.”
Board passes districtwide fundraising policy by Ashley Archibald
December 01, 2011
LINCOLN — After many hours of testimony and discussion Tuesday, the Board of Education unanimously passed a policy prohibiting PTAs from paying for staff salaries, benefits or training, and instead entrusting that duty to the Santa Monica-Malibu Education Foundation.
The vote ended a sometimes acrimonious process of public debate and testimony between groups that want to continue paying for staff at individual schools through PTAs and those that want to centralize fundraising to pay for programs for the entire district.
The issue has renewed interest in Malibu to break away and form its own school district.
Those for the policy characterized it as a civil rights issue, that wealthy people should not be able to buy a better education than a low-income person within the same public school district.
Detractors felt that while the goal of parity was a good one, the method would end up destroying valued programs at all schools by alienating the biggest donors and starving the district of private funds.
To read more, go here.
SMMUSD School Board Votes 6-0 To Change Fundraising Plan by Parimal M. Rohit
The ground rules of school fundraising have officially been changed, as the Board of Education of the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District (SMMUSD) unanimously approved a controversial district-wide fundraising concept on Nov. 29 during a special meeting held at Lincoln Middle School.
Tuesday’s special meeting vote greatly diminished the role local Parent Teacher Associations (PTA) play in fundraising activities for various academic and extracurricular activities.
The 6-0 vote basically disallows PTAs raising money to pay salaries of district personnel or fund school programs and services severely affected by the state’s recent budget cuts.
SMMUSD Superintendent Sandra Lyon said the non-centralized fundraising system practiced by respective PTAs created “great inequities across the district … (and) a climate in which the instruction and instructional experiences students receive and the conditions in which teachers work are altered by the amount of money individual PTAs can raise.”
In light of Tuesday’s vote, the Santa Monica-Malibu Education Foundation was designated as the oversight entity to manage the centralized fundraising system.
To read more, go here.
School Board Strips PTAs of Major Fundraising Roles by Jenna Chandler
The Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Board of Education votes 6-0 to stop PTAs from paying the salaries of extra personnel like teacher aides, saying it creates inequities among schools.
In what two board members proclaimed to be the most significant votes of their tenures, the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Board of Education voted unanimously late Tuesday to shake up the district’s fundraising rules.
Shortly before midnight and after more than three hours of public input, the board voted 6-0 to prohibit school PTAs from raising money to hire personnel and to block them from funding programs and services eliminated in the wake of state budget cuts.
The nonprofit Santa Monica-Malibu Education Foundation will be placed in charge of these efforts as early as the 2013-14 school year, but no later than July 2014.
“Allowing individual PTAs to raise and expend money to hire staff in SMMUSD is a practice … [that] has created great inequities across the district,” said Superintendent Sandra Lyon. It “creates a climate in which the instruction and instructional experiences students receive and the conditions in which teachers work are altered by the amount of money individual PTAs can raise.”
To read more, go here.
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