Santa Monica Smoked Out By Malibu Gamble, Makes Undisclosed Divorce Terms Counter-Offer to Malibu

The Santa Monica school board will make a new divorce offer to Malibu today … and in a seven hour long closed door meeting last night … they reaffirmed its desire to divorce the two cities’ school district.

After the meeting ended … just after 11 last night … a district spokeswoman said a formal letter will go out to the City of Malibu today.

Malibu had forced the school board’s hand.

After more than a year of no negotiations or positions from Santa Monica … the Malibu city council decided to send its petition for splitting the district on to the county without Santa Monica’s permission.

That led to the school board meeting last night … a meeting that had been billed a legal strategy session for the upcoming county hearing on the issue.

That meeting was to be held in eight days … next Saturday … and both sides were lining up members of the public to make their cases.

Instead …. the school board changed direction last night.

First … it unanimously approved cleaving out Malibu from the Santa Monica district … a position that many in Malibu had dismissed as mere lip service when it was made years ago.

And at 5 after 11 last night … school board president Jon Kean emerged to read a five-part statement …

NEWSCART 73369 KEAN ONE

“The SMUSD Board of Education reaffirms its interest and priority in creating two separate school districts so long as the unification is realized in an equitable manner.”

And that of course is the bone of contention.

What is equitable???

Santa Monica relies on property tax revenue generated in Malibu to keep its programs and services going.

Santa Monica was demanding upwards of four billion dollars in tax subsidies from Malibu over the next 50 years … according to Malibu’s analysis.

Malibu was offering 50 million over 10 years … a paltry sum … according to Santa Monica’s analysis.

Board president Jon Kean last night.

 NEWSCART 73368 KEAN TWO

“Next: the Board of Education has given direction to staff to reject the City of Malibu proposal … titled its best and final offer.’

“The vote was 6 to 1 … with board member Foster dissenting.”

That of course would be Craig Foster … the lone elected member from Malibu to make it onto the Santa Moncia dominated school board in the last 15 years.

There are seven times more voters in Santa Monica … than in Malibu … and voting often breaks down into geographical preferences. 

It appears that the school board spent much of the seven hours last night hashing out the terms of a counteroffer.

Once again … Jon Kean:

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“The Board of Education approves the updated proposal to the City of Malibu and has given direction to staff and representatives to submit the latest proposal to the City of Malibu for their consideration.”

And that is the crux of the issue.

What was decided last night??

What is the school board’s counter-offer???

We don’t know.

California does have a strong open meetings law …

It requires government agencies to deliberate in public on policy decisions.

But last night’s board meeting was couched as a legal strategy session … not a policy decision. 

Earlier yesterday … KBUU News filed informal objections to the closed door session.

The radio station argued that this was not a legal strategy session on the pending divorce case … at all.

Rather .. it was going to be a debate … a matter of public policy … potentially involving quite literally billions of dollars of taxpayer money.

The public … under state law … had a right to hear that debate.

The board’s attorney rejected our claims.

The board met in secret for seven hours … 

It came out with a terse statement … but no details on what is going to be offered to Malibu. 

And no details were given on how the decision was reached.

A spokesperson who was inside the meeting said some of those details would be made available later today.

Last night … Kean offered no details on the new Santa Monica proposal.

NEWSCART 73366 KEAN FOUR 

“The board has also given direction to staff and representatives to request to meet immediately with the City of Malibu financial representatives .., to analyze the current proposal from SMMUSD.”

And it appears that the county will be brought in to be a mediator of sorts … the County to analyze the conflicting figures from the two sides.

Again … board president Jon Kean.

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“The board has also authorized staff and its representatives to request to meet with the Los Angeles County Committee on School District Organization financial consultant and the Malibu financial representatives to study all material (and) methodologies and analyze the proposal submitted … if and only if the meeting at L A County CCSDO (on) April 17th is postponed.”

Board president Jon Kean.

By moving the policy discussion behind closed doors … the school board not only avoided public scrutiny of the meeting … it made it legally impossible for our elected representatives to discuss what happened… and what all this means.

Craig Foster and other board members now have an effective gag order.

No board members are allowed to discuss what had happened inside the meeting.

So …the upshot … later today … the school superintendent will send a letter to Malibu’s city council … which may or may not have details on what the board decided last night.

The issue almost certainly will be added to the Malibu city council agenda for next Monday.

On the same day that all this was going down… the City of Santa Monica publicly called on its residents to oppose Malibu’s independence drive.

The city of Santa Monica issued an official statement … accusing Malibu of planning to hurt Santa Monica children.

Written by Santa Monica’s acting city manager … the statement criticized Malibu for campaigning for school district independence during a pandemic,

It accused Malibu of coming up with a plan that would have given Malibu students twice as much money as Santa Monica kids … without mentioning that Santa Monica’s district has tax revenues other than property tax that Malibu does not have.

The Santa Monica city manager urged residents to send emails to L A County Office of Education … to share that the Malibu independence petition should be denied.