Malibu Residents Ask To Zoom Into County Meeting To Demand A Separate Malibu School District
Written by 991KBU on March 9, 2021
The move to split Malibu out of the school district 20 miles away in Santa Monica moves before a county Board of Education committee next month.
Malibu has been trying to get out of the Santa Monica Malibu Unified School District for decades.
The lone school board member from Malibu … Craig Foster … blames Santa Monica interests for actring against th einterests on Malibu schoolkids and taxpayers.
The next step is to take the city’s divorce petition to the county.
And there is already is a dispute.
The county and Malibu are disagreeing over what is supposed to happen at the April 17th meeting.
According to the city’s team … in a report to the city council last night … county officials say the meeting is to make a decision on whether Malibu has already made its case for a separate school district.
The city’s contention is that a whole lot of additional work must take place first … financial studies … an environmental impoact report on splitting the district … things like that.
NEWSCART 73307 CRISTINA WINOGRAD O THE COUNTY COMMITTEE
“Whether it’s a hearing on the sufficiency of the petition … or the full merits of the petition … we will have that hearing on Saturday April 17th …
“So one of the questions that we get from the community is ‘what can is there we can do now as a community or as an interested people?’
“Put the date of the 17th on your calendar …
“We would like to make sure that the community is there and is present … and is activel;y making its opinions known to the committee.”
No matter what the county committee decides next month … Winograd says it will take years to move the Malibu school divorce through the county and state bureaucracy.
Remember … it has taken one community 20 years to get moved from one distant school district into a closer … more logical one.
The city’s consultants gave a financial presentation to the city council last night … and repeated the fact that Santa Monica will still rank in the top four districts in L A County in terms of per-student money from property taxes.
Santa Monica’s school board majority has reneged on its promise to let Malibu form its own district … after it decided it could not afford to give up Malibu property tax revenues that subnsidize Santa Monica schools.
Again … the hearing will be on the Zoom platform on Saturday … April 17th … and school district supporters are urging Malibu residents to attend and speak.
