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.”
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Advocates for Malibu Public Schools 