School District Advisory Group to Meet on Fundraising Policy

The 32-member advisory group assigned to form a recommendation on how to implement  will hold its first meeting this afternoon at  in Santa Monica.

The policy  in November to the delight and anger of many stakeholders after just three public hearings. It prohibits PTAs from hiring personnel such as reading specialists and teacher aides (PTAs already cannot hire teachers) and to support programs and services eliminated due to SMMUSD budget cuts. The Santa Monica-Malibu Education Foundation has been placed in charge of these efforts. The policy also makes it so the SMMEF is the only entity that can receive corporate gifts of $2,500 or more. 

The policy is expected to be fully implemented for elementary schools by the 2013-2014 school year.

The purpose of the policy, advocates say, is to address what they see as an imbalance in educational opportunities among the various schools in the SMMUSD. Some schools are able to raise more money than others, so they provide more programs for the students.

Opponents say the concept will reduce district fundraising overall because fewer people will want to contribute if the money is not going to their children's schools. Also, fundraising has been placed in the hands of an entity, the SMMEF, that has never proven it can annually raise the millions of dollars needed to meet the district's needs. They say the policy will kill programs dependent on PTA funding.

A better plan, opponents say, would be for the wealthier schools to assist the others to improve their fundraising.

One of the controversial issues is that the policy was approved with extremely limited research and no public outreach. It was crafted by recently hired , who introduced the plan to the public in a brief PowerPoint presentation at a meeting in Malibu less than a month before the policy was approved by the board.

Lyon and then Board President José Escarce said the reasoning behind the unprecedented limited public process was because it was best to approve the concept first, then figure out the details later.

Escarce said at the second public hearing that if the district tried to figure out the details for the policy before approving it, this would delay the process for months and possibly years. 

The advisory group's meeting will begin at 4 p.m. The district building is located at 1651 16th Street in Santa Monica.  The meeting is open to the public.