A stacked Saturday morning of public comment was heard at the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District (SMMUSD) offices, with supporters and opponents of district-based voting for the SMMUSD Board of Education fiercely arguing their positions.
The Board of Education meeting room was filled to the brim with Santa Monica and Malibu residents having their say to the Los Angeles County Office of Education Committee on School District Organization. The committee’s public hearing was the second focusing on the legality of the voting map submitted as part of a petition aiming to establish trustee districts, specifically the petitioners’ map which would make non-contiguous districts merging parts of Malibu and Santa Monica. Two of the map’s seven proposed “trustee areas” would make mergers, including one combining the eastern half of Malibu with Santa Monica’s Sunset Park neighborhood, and another fusing the western half of Malibu with Santa Monica’s North of Montana (NOMA) and Wilmont neighborhoods.
Presenting first to the committee was attorney Kevin Shenkman, who initially submitted the petition in 2022 on behalf of residents, claiming that the district’s current at-large voting system is unfair to minority voters. Echoing points made at the Jan. 31 committee hearing on the Malibu campus of Santa Monica College, Shenkman said that a trustee area split that includes six Santa Monica districts and one district encompassing all of Malibu is not “advisable” because it would be underrepresenting Malibu residents, instead proposing the two non-contiguous districts.
Shenkman further stated that a trustee area voting split with just one Malibu district would be “regionalism,” the creation of population deviation allowing board power to be held by Santa Monica residents “to a degree disproportionate to their population.” Demographer David Ely added that the petitioners’ maps, the one initially submitted as well as two alternates unveiled at the Jan. 31 hearing, were drawn to “respect neighborhoods as much as possible,” particularly the Pico neighborhood, which many pro-map commenters believe has been underrepresented on the SMMUSD board.
One of the commenters was Santa Monica City Councilmember Oscar de la Torre, who also served on the SMMUSD board for 18 years. He noted that it has been a “lengthy struggle” for fair elections in the district, and that the major lesson he learned on the board is that the “people in power” will “rarely” come from communities “that have the most to lose when public education fails to deliver on its promise.”
“It should be very clear to everyone by now that those in power support the status quo and want nothing to change,” de la Torre said. “They support the at-large election system … at-large elections [have been] used as a tool to marginalize voters of color throughout the country, and this is also true for the city of Santa Monica.”
In response, attorney representing SMMUSD Dale Larson noted that a trustee area voting map “must be contiguous” if it is geographically possible and can comply with population equality, which he argued can be done with one trustee district encompassing all of Malibu, rather than having two non-contiguous districts. A hypothetical splitting of the SMMUSD population into seven districts, with one comprising Malibu and surrounding unincorporated areas, would fall within the 10% difference between the most and least populous district allowed by the United States Constitution that still satisfies population requirements.
Larson called the petitioners’ map the “Al Capone of maps” due to what he deemed numerous illegalities, including the map not respecting geographic integrity of neighborhoods, bypassing “geographical compactness” by being in favor of more distant populations, and discriminating against incumbents on the board. On the petitioners’ demands for two non-contiguous districts, Larson said those two districts would gerrymander a majority Malibu population, and that the Malibu has actually been overrepresented on the SMMUSD board in the past relative to its population.
“I hear what they’re saying about their concerns, [but] the law doesn’t work that way … it’s a non-contiguous gerrymander to increase Malibu power,” Larson said.
SMMUSD representatives also responded to petitioner claims of being unfair to minority voters, stating that the last two times a Latino candidate lost a campaign for school board (1996 and 2004), the candidate lost out to other Latino candidates.
“As a member of a protected class myself, I want to be clear that I support the purposes of the [California Voting Rights Act] … I do not, however, support a transition to voting districts in this community, and especially do not support the illegal map that accompanies the petition,” said SMMUSD Board member Alicia Mignano, a Latina member of the board from the Pico neighborhood. “In this community, we have a track record of protected class citizens successfully electing representation of our choice.”
Both proponents and opponents of the map were invigorated in their arguments. Many proponents of the map echoed de la Torre’s insistence that Pico residents were not fairly represented, including Pico Neighborhood Association Chair Brian O’Neil, who said the at-large election system has “systematically disenfranchised” the neighborhood. Other neighborhood groups outside of Pico pushed for trustee voting, including representatives of Santa Monica Northeast Neighbors and Friends of Sunset Park.
“Residents across the city are concerned about the lack of fiscal accountability by the current school board, which was elected at-large … it’s time for the election of school board members to be conducted in a manner that gives representation to all neighborhoods,” said Santa Monica Northeast Neighbors Chair Tricia Crane, who added that the at-large system is propped up by a “culture of intimidation” against those speaking out.
Map opponents pointed to several reasonings why the petition should be unsuccessful, such as the map being “textbook gerrymandering,” the splitting up of communities of interest, the lack of logic behind the non-contiguous districts, and the fact that trustee districts would only be able to vote for one board member every four years.
The splitting of Santa Monica neighborhoods was a particular concern of Santa Monica City Councilmember Gleam Davis, who called the map an “abomination.”
“It breaks up communities of interest within the Santa Monica city boundaries,” Davis said. “North of Montana, Ocean Park, Sunset Park, Mid-City, all of these areas have very specific needs … and this map completely ignores [them] in the interest of promoting the interest[s] of some folks in Malibu. That is certainly within their prerogative, but it is not legal … I don’t think you have any option other than to reject this map.”
Others honed in on this point, as well as what they felt was gerrymandering, including Lincoln Middle School teacher Esther Andersen, who said that “no district is perfect” but that the proposed map “was created by limited interests” and was not developed “with community input.”
SMMUSD Board President Jennifer Smith also commented on claims made by Malibu residents during the Jan. 31 hearing, accusing the board of using at-large voting to retain power in district matters.
“The truth is, during the entirety of my service on this board, as well as in my 15 years in volunteer service to our district … I have never seen the board make a decision that did not have the best interest of the students, staff and community as the primary guiding principle,” Smith said.
The Feb. 10 hearing was the second for the committee, who will be making a decision on the petition.