The two cities that make up the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District want a divorce — and the points of contention are similar to those that plague most messy breakups. Money. Power. Fairness. And most volatile of all: what is in the best interests of the children.
Malibu wants control over how money is spent on education programs and teachers and over what courses Malibu high school students are offered. And it wants the ability to create a safety plan that accounts for the community’s particular disasters of fire, mudslide and flood. “The only category we are ahead is in the amount of property taxes we disproportionately pay to SMMUSD to enhance programs that are mostly in Santa Monica,” he said during a spring hearing on the breakup. Members of the “Santa Monica-centric” school board “clearly don’t understand the unique challenges we face as a rural community.”And what exactly does “rural” mean in Malibu?
The wrangling over dividing up plenty is happening at a time when other school districts are struggling just to get enough. When the Between the 2014-15 school year and 2019-20, the combined student population of the city’s two elementary schools, one middle school and one high school dropped 25%, from 1,871 to 1,406 students.Malibu officials cite the Woolsey fire, which destroyed hundreds of homes in the area. They also blame school quality for driving students to private schools or other districts.
And then there are the intangibles. As Kean noted: “If you’re going to say how horrible the district is, you can’t say how shocked you are when people leave.”Malibu officials wonder why they should pony up so much money for what they view as an inferior education. It’s a matter of equity and local control, they say. They want Malibu property taxes to go to Malibu children.
Right now, per-pupil spending in the combined district is roughly $18,400, said Shin Green, a financial consultant for the unified district. By the time the 10-year deal Malibu is proposing ends, Santa Monica students would get about $21,000, Green said. And property tax money possibly available to Malibu students? About $98,000 per student.Asked about that figure, Wood, the Malibu attorney, just laughed; their calculations are too ridiculous to ponder.
All over in CA in dumps are buried 8000000 trillion tons of plastic. Just because it isnt floating in the ocean where Asia dumps all theirs, doesn't mean it isn't real and polluting soil and ground water.
Cat fight 🐱
Well, remember that Santa Monica produced Stephen Nazi Miller, so…
good
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