Last week, the City of Malibu announced it would exit negotiations with the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District (SMMUSD) despite reaching a new milestone just last month. Malibu unification, which would separate Santa Monica and Malibu schools within SMMUSD into two distinct districts, has been in the works for over a decade. The terms unification and separation can be used interchangeably here – Malibu would create an independent unified school district by separating from SMMUSD.

Arguments for separating come down to local control. SMMUSD supports the separation but has opposed earlier attempts by Malibu to split without the district’s input. SMMUSD representatives have raised concerns over the years that, if done incorrectly, the separation could lead to an inequitable division of resources and harm Santa Monica students.

SMMUSD and the City of Malibu began negotiations in earnest in 2022. A clean break seemed possible in September after the district reached key agreements with Malibu over the terms of the split. Now, the City of Malibu is changing course and taking its case directly to the L.A. County Office of Education (LACOE).

The Malibu City Council voted unanimously to leave negotiations with SMMUSD and to file a petition for separation with the LACOE Committee on School District Organization last week. Malibu said it would present its 2017 separation petition to the county with a new independent feasibility study, which the city said would include some of the terms reached over the last two years of bargaining with SMMUSD. 

However, the city said the new study will exclude “financial concessions” it agreed to in negotiations, though it is unclear exactly what those are.

Malibu’s updated volley for independence would uphold the “guiding principles that (1) the formation of an independent MUSD is in the best interest of all students; and (2) both MUSD and SMUSD will receive sufficient funding to provide a similar level of service that existed before separation,” the city said in a statement. 

Malibu Mayor Doug Stewart said their decision came after SMMUSD failed to follow the timeline for completing the separation agreements. The separation package reached in September included three agreements for revenue sharing, operational transfer, and joint powers. The agreements still needed to be finalized and approved by the City of Malibu and SMMUSD. 

The separation agreements between the City of Malibu and SMMUSD were by no means the final hurdle to all of this. Both parties acknowledged hard work ahead, and more parties to contend with, namely, the public and LACOE. 

The first SMMUSD meeting discussing the proposed agreements took place on October 15. David Saldoni, legal counsel to the district, clarified that the agreements were still in draft form and the district was still collecting information and analyzing potential outcomes of the separation package. 

Throughout the meeting, each agreement was discussed at great length, with board members expressing a desire for further discussion on the package. They noted also that some of the terms of the separation would be impacted by the outcomes of Measures MM and QS, two education bonds on the November ballot; MM for Malibu-based schools and QS for Santa Monica schools in the district. 

By the end of the meeting, the board agreed to move back the date of the next meeting, where they had initially planned to vote on the separation package, from October 24 to November 7. Saldoni said the negotiation team would be taking the board’s suggested revisions or requests for clarifications to the Malibu side. 

LACOE had already scheduled public hearings for November on the separation. The board chose November 7 because it would presumably allow them to approve the separation package before the LACOE proceedings began. 

“While we had hoped to complete this process by the end of October, and we are very close to accomplishing that, it is far more important that we get things right,” SMMUSD board Vice President and member of the unification sub-committee Jon Kean said in a statement on Monday. 

“We are continuing this process and a path toward creating an independent Malibu Unified School District. This means we must allow for ample time to hear the concerns and incorporate valid suggestions” from SMMUSD employees, students, and families. “SMMUSD will not place artificial obstacles or random dates as deterrents in finalizing these agreements in a rigorous manner. What some might see as a short delay others will see as due diligence, proper governance, and a thorough attention to details,” Kean added.

This is the second time this year that Malibu has left negotiations with the district. In July, Malibu also attempted to return to its 2017 separation petition with LACOE but eventually came back to the table. At the time, Soldani called the decision “baffling” and an “attempt to disenfranchise SMMUSD students residing in Santa Monica.” 

In 2021, LACOE determined in a preliminary analysis that Malibu may not substantially meet eight of the nine qualifications for creating an independent school district. LACOE reported that the separation would “have a significant negative fiscal impact on the Santa Monica-Malibu USD.” LACOE still made the recommendation that the petition move forward one step in the approval process so the office could further investigate and Malibu could respond to specific concerns. 

At the time, SMMUSD strongly opposed Malibu’s petition, saying it was fundamentally inequitable, and would create a “small, segregated district.” 

The LACOE Committee on School District Organization will hold two public hearings to consider Malibu’s updated petition. The first will occur on November 8 in the SMMUSD board room, where representatives from the City of Malibu and SMMUSD will present their arguments to the county.

Photo by Jengod, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.