County Committee meeting on School District Organization, Wed, Apr 2, 9am

There will be a County Committee meeting at 9AM on Wednesday, April 2, to discuss the organization of the school district and whether to approve or disapprove the terms of the current Malibu petition for unification. It is a hybrid meeting, info at this link. The last meeting (November 2024) did not have an equal number of public comments from Malibu and Santa Monica, so we at Council encourage everyone to participate. Starting with the name: unification means the effort to create an independent Malibu school district. Malibu filed a petition to separate from the SMMUSD (originally in 2017), and a number of hearings have been held thus far, with another to come next Wednesday, April 2. 

The parties to the action are: 

– SMMUSD - the current school district

– City of Malibu – the petitioner for an independent school district

– LA County Office of Education (LACOE): county-level decisionmaker that will approve or disapprove Malibu's petition, through its County Committee on School District organization.

– State Board of Education: the petition to unify a Malibu USD would likely be appealed to the State, and approved at that level.

Here are more resources:

1) Fact sheet about school district information. This comes from SMMUSD. Note that SMMUSD is opposed to the petition, and this sheet contains data about the district (Santa Monica comprises 88% of the District's students, for example). 

2) Malibu's webpage in favor of the city's petition for unification: https://www.malibucity.org/782/Proposed-Malibu-Unified-School-District

3) SMMUSD's webpage opposing the Malibu petition: https://www.smmusd.org/MalibuUnification

4) NOTE: the open question before the County Committee is whether to approve or disapprove the terms of the current Malibu petition for unification. It is not about unification in general.

5) You may review all past arguments for and against the Malibu petition at the LACOE website.  

Further facts:

Since 2017, PTA council has not taken a position on unification. There has been no study. While we encourage all engaged community members to participate by submitting comments or speaking, we do not advocate a position. SMMUSD and City of Malibu formed subcommittees to negotiate terms of a separation agreement. The committees have failed to come to an agreement. A majority of the SMM Classroom Teachers Association did not and does not support the 2017 Malibu petition.

**Please consider speaking out at for the April 2 meeting, sending an email, participating via Zoom, or participating in person, whether you support or oppose the Malibu petition.