After threats of walking away from a school district unification process, the City of Malibu is seemingly back on board to an originally-planned schedule to form a Malibu Unified School District.
On Wednesday, the Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE) County Committee on School District Organization held an informational update on the years-long unification process between Malibu and the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District (SMMUSD). The committee requested the presence of attorneys Christine Wood (representing the City of Malibu) and David Soldani (representing SMMUSD) after a back-and-forth between the parties through the month of July.
After requesting the committee set a public hearing on its original 2017 petition for unification, Wood reversed course and stated that Malibu and SMMUSD have made a "considerable amount of progress" on its three key unification tenants: revenue sharing, joint powers and operations. She added that the revenue sharing agreement is "virtually finished," almost all terms of the joint powers agreement have been agreed to, and that the operations agreement is 75% complete. Soldani later responded by stating the latter agreement is more in the 95% range of being done.
Wood said that she sent the request for the original petition to be heard due to concerns "about the lack of urgency that (SMMUSD) is placing on the process."
"The City felt again that it was in our best interest to return to the county committee so we didn’t have any further delays," Wood added.
In Soldani’s update, the attorney stated that a timeline was set in June for a November hearing on the completed unification package, and that the district would "remain at the table" as long as that schedule is adhered to. If Malibu were to have scheduled a hearing earlier than that time, SMMUSD would "no longer participate in mediations." In a July 17 email to the committee, Soldani added that SMMUSD "vehemently opposes" the 2017 petition due to the fact the petition would likely fail the majority of criteria laid out by the committee.
"Every once in a while, we’ll have a little bit of a hiccup, but to date, we’ve been able to surmount any of those challenges and that remains true today," Soldani said. "We had a little bit of a stalemate on an issue of two, and we’re breaking through that now and still working together."
The November date was made so that the final hurdles in the package could be finalized for an October 24 vote by the SMMUSD Board of Education. The committee eventually agreed unanimously to hold subsequent public hearings in both Santa Monica and Malibu before the Thanksgiving holiday. SMMUSD Board of Education Vice President Jon Kean, who has been on the negotiating subcommittee for the past six years, said that "no one is as tired as me" of the elongated process, but feels that both sides of the table are still on track.
"Negotiating committees want the same thing, two independent school districts with an equitable split of resources so both can operate in a similar manner on day one," Kean said. "We believe we can deliver that."
Several public comments from the Malibu side agreed, while stressing their desire for a resolution that provides "local control" over educational decisions.
"We always hear that we’re close, but somehow, we never get there," said former Malibu Mayor Lou LaMont. "The one thing both parties do agree on is that separating these school districts is in the best interest of the students in both cities, who are already physically split apart by 25 miles and by community character … we respectfully request that (the committee) help expedite the petition and give our children the separate Malibu Unified School District they deserve and are entitled to," LaMont said.
If the full unification package is approved by the SMMUSD board, the November public hearings would take place followed by a committee staff feasibility study on the action. If the committee approves the amended petition at that point, it would then move to the State Board of Education, with committee members stating that unification "is a state action."
Once the petition moves to the state board, it may be placed under the board’s regular petition queue, which could take "as long as four years" for approval. After state board approval, Malibu and SMMUSD will have to conduct a California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) study, with the committee stating that "given the complexity" of district geography, a full Environmental Impact Report will likely have to be done. After the CEQA process, the petition would return to the state board for final approval.
Another option, the committee noted, could be to bypass the state board via a special legislation package, but that is something the committee could not predict at this time.
