Will Malibu Leave Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District?

SANTA MONICA, CA — In the next step to creating its own potential school district, Malibu city officials urged separation from the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Wednesday night, alleging “neglect” by the district.

Nearly 200 people attended a three-hour-long virtual hearing with the Los Angeles County Committee on School District Organization — the third community hearing on the city of Malibu’s petition to create an independent Malibu Unified School District.

Residents from both cities aired their grievances in the petition, citing concerns over funding and what could happen to Santa Monica students and the district if Malibu leaves and highlighting potential racial segregation that could affect the two communities.

A Tale Of Two Cities

Geographically, Malibu and Santa Monica are separated by 18 miles. Some argued that they are fundamentally different towns: one rural and the other a city.

“Malibu people don’t know Santa Monica people, and Santa Monica people don’t know Malibu,” former Malibu Mayor Laura Rosenthal said.

In September, the Los Angeles County Office of Education's Division of Business Advisory Services wrote in a preliminary report that the Malibu petition did not sufficiently meet eight of nine conditions the county committee uses to evaluate the proposal during its regular review process.

District officials argued that Malibu’s proposal does not address low enrollment and declining population in the rural town.

“This is a demographic trend. This is an aging community, which is having an expected decline in birth rates,” according to Shin Green, a fiscal consultant to the district.

Only 921 students are currently enrolled in Malibu schools, which is a reflection of the city's demographics and a decreasing population trend in the area.

“No surprise here, something that has been experiencing throughout California for a number of years but is very much more pronounced in the Malibu area,” Green said.

Malibu’s enrollment has dropped by 5 percent each year. In Santa Monica, the enrollment decline has been 1 percent per year, Green said.

The largest demographic drop has been among elementary school students, with a 6.5 percent decrease in grades K-3.

“To put it bluntly, 63 percent of the Malibu population is over the age of 45, not very likely to have kids, and this is why the birth rates have declined over the period we’re discussing,” Green said.

Not enough young families and children could sustain a Malibu district, he argued.

“Residents between ages of 20 and 34, the prime child-bearing years, comprise just 11 percent of the total population in the city of Malibu,” Green said.

Families are not moving to Malibu, he added.

“The city of Malibu is not a place where young families have an opportunity to move in, and as such, enrollments have not been increasing as the existing population continues to age and ceases to produce children,” Green added.

A potential Malibu low-end estimate is 670 students in the future, which does not meet the No. 1 criterion under the Los Angeles County Committee on School District Organization’s review process.

Rejected Criteria

At Wednesday's virtual meeting, interim Malibu City Manager Steve McClary went through each of the rejected criteria, touching on many of the main concerns of Malibu city personnel and constituents.

Many members of the Malibu public and city leaders said that much of Malibu’s enrollment decline is a result of poor conditions at Malibu schools and that the enrollment would increase again after separation.

“I am hoping it is not lost on the committee that a portion of the declining enrollment is directly related to district actions,” said Christine Woods, deputy city attorney for Malibu.

Members of the public and city personnel also lamented the district’s failure to account for the 2018 Woolsey fire, which displaced many Malibu residents.

“I’m also a Woolsey fire survivor and find it a bit offensive that the fire and its effects on our community was ignored by the district’s presentation of Malibu enrollment data. Our community is still rebuilding, and families are still returning,” said Dana Groulich, a Malibu parent and business owner.

Groulich begrudgingly moved her children to private school after she — like many other Malibu public speakers — became disheartened by the lack of Malibu representation on the district Board of Education. The seven-member board currently has only one Malibu representative, Craig Foster.

Superintendent Benjamin Drati, Ph.D. described concerns over equity and racial segregation and questioned whether a Malibu district would preserve the diversity the district has established. He also argued that special education students and lower-income, Latinx and Black students would be primarily impacted by a separation.

“Santa Monica territory houses 90.7 percent of the special-needs student population, compared to the 9.3 in Malibu territory,” Drati said. “And within the territories, the majority of students who are special needs in Santa Monica is higher than in the Malibu territory.”

Drati said it was “disturbing” that Malibu had not set an education plan on the proposed district and had not explained how it would educate special education students.

“Given the history of systemic and structural discrimination in this country, which has even touched the education system in the form of rich, wealthy and predominately white communities peeling themselves away from bigger districts while taking away the community resources assigned to public education in that region or district,” Drati said.

”This is happening all over the nation and even in our own state of California. It is what is being proposed by the Malibu City Council,” Drati said.

One Of The Richest Districts In The U.S.?

If Malibu were to separate, it could make a potential Malibu district one of the richest districts in the U.S., district officials argued.

A key concern for Malibu representatives was the office of education’s review process. Malibu Councilmember Mikkie Pierson accused the office of not appropriately considering the data and information provided by Malibu in its petition and preliminary feasibility analysis submitted in April.

Additionally, Pierson said that Malibu’s inability to have direct contact with the committee or its consultants is of concern to the city.

“The city has submitted hundreds of pages of material, some of which do not correlate to what is provided in the LACOE" and School Services, a consultant that conducted a fiscal analysis of the proposal report, Pierson said. “So I ask: If your staff and consultants do not have a thorough understanding of exactly what our proposal is or disagree with our financial assumptions, how can you, the county committee, properly evaluate our proposal?”

Malibu city personnel addressed the county office of education’s preliminary review of the city's petition, which found that it had insufficiently met eight of nine criteria used to assess the petition in the committee’s regular review process.

“Our students should not have to suffer any longer,” said Malibu Councilmember Karen Farrer, who has worked on efforts to create a separate Malibu district for over a decade.

What Comes Next?

The California Department of Education has the final say. If it approves the proposal, the matter will go to voters to approve the creation of a Malibu district.

Within 120 days of Wednesday’s public hearing, the county committee will gather data and prepare a feasibility study on the petition, according to the county office of education.

Within the 120 day period of creating the feasibility study, the county committee will decide whether to move the petition forward to the California Department of Education based on the nine criteria that the county office of education used in its preliminary report.

Should the county committee approve the petition, the state department will hold a public hearing and decide whether to approve the proposal.

The process could be lengthy, Deegan said. With current wait times and department processes, the petition could drag on for another five years.

The Malibu City Council aims to push forward with the process.

The city of Malibu is moving forward with planning for an independent school district by embarking on a "community visioning project" to define community values, the city said in a statement on Oct. 29.

Malibu city officials circulated a survey to community members to help determine the "values" of a potential new school district.

The results of the ongoing visioning project will include the survey results and focus groups and will address the sixth criterion of the county office of education's review process.

Criterion six asks petitioners to ensure "the proposed reorganization will continue to promote sound education performance and will not significantly disrupt the educational programs in the districts affected by the proposed reorganization," according to the county's preliminary review.

Malibu's proposal did not adequately meet these criteria in the county's preliminary review, given financial concerns about a potential Santa Monica school district.

The report said that Malibu has not sufficiently proven the split will be financially equitable or that it will not cause any increase in school housing costs or affect the financial status of the resultant districts. The findings concluded that the proposed split would cause significant financial harm to a resultant Santa Monica school district.

"The funding disparities between the two districts would be stark, and the losses that would be experienced by the remaining Santa Monica USD would undoubtedly affect the educational programs currently being offered to students within the current Santa Monica-Malibu USD," the county office of education said in the report.

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