The Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District (SMMUSD) Board of Education enters 2024 with new leadership and a slate of agenda items ranging from facility health to student performance.
Thursday’s meeting of the board is the first of the new year and the first with Jennifer Smith and Jon Kean as the board’s President and Vice-President, respectively. The makeup of the board remains unchanged heading into 2024 aside from the new assignment of duties and the addition of SMMUSD Superintendent Dr. Antonio Shelton as Board Secretary.
A discussion will be held during Thursday’s meeting regarding the new campus plan for Franklin Elementary School, presented by district staff and dsk Architects. The updated plan, the district states, is "the result of examining many site alternatives and approximately 30 meetings with school staff and the local community over a three-year period."
Franklin’s final campus plan, which proposes such endeavors as a TK/K classroom complex and a library & "flex" building, was initially approved in fall of 2022. However, as the plan proceeded to move into the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) process, it was determined that the school’s proposed Maker Space Building would remove portable buildings needed for interim classroom housing. Along with this issue, the California Geological Survey notified the district that an earthquake fault was believed to exist within the school site, which impacted the location of buildings in the previously-approved plan.
Subsequent geological tests determined that an earthquake fault was not located on the school site, but the delay combined with the school site’s new requirement for additional interim classrooms, forced dsk Architects and the district to develop alternative plans. The latest plan, which delivers necessary interim housing among other fixes, was unanimously approved by the Franklin Site Committee in October 2023.
Along with facility health, the board will look at the district’s 2023 California School Dashboard presentation in a study session. The dashboard reports performance and progress in 13 different areas that reflect the priorities of California’s Local Control Funding Formula and the metrics required by the federal Every Student Succeeds Act.
The presentation includes state indicators such as academics (English Language Arts, literacy and mathematics), chronic absenteeism rate, English learner progress, graduation rate and suspension rate. Local educational agencies such as the district receive one of five color-coded performance levels on state indicators, those being blue (very high), green (high), yellow (medium), orange (low) and red (very low).
According to the Dashboard, the district is in the "blue" for graduation rate (95.2% in 2023) and English Language Arts (ELA) performance, scoring 56.7 points above grade-level standards on ELA in either the Smarter Balanced Summative Assessment or the California Alternate Assessment.
The district scored high or "green" in the indicators of suspension rate, English learner progress and mathematics, and received a medium "yellow" grade for chronic absenteeism. The 2022-23 school year data, counting students Kindergarten-8th grade who were absent 10 percent or more of the instructional days enrolled, found that 17.1% of district students fit that criteria. This was a decline of 2.2% from the previous year’s data.
Standards from the Dashboard were met by the district in the categories of "basics" (teachers, instructional materials, facilities), implementation of academic standards, parent and family engagement, local climate survey and "access to a broad course of study."
