Three seats on the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District (SMMUSD) Board of Education are up for a vote this November. The candidates seeking re-election, Board President Jennifer Smith, Vice President Jon Kean, and Board Member Maria Leon-Vazquez are running on the same slate to retain their three seats on the Board.

Christine Falaguerra, the single challenger to the incumbent candidates, withdrew from the race in late September. Santa Monica does not hold elections when there is no competition – elections for the Rent Control Board and the Santa Monica College Board will not appear on the ballot because the number of candidates is equal to the number of positions available. But because Falaguerra withdrew after the filing deadline, she will still appear on the ballot alongside the other candidates. 

Kean, Leon-Vazquez, and Smith currently serve the 8,700 students across the district. Each candidate has children who are currently students or graduates of SMMUSD schools.

Jon Kean spoke with Westside Voice about the district’s successes and the challenges that lay ahead. Kean got involved with Santa Monica-Malibu schools when his children started attending, eventually leading to his election to the board in 2016. Outside of his SMMUSD work, he is a documentary filmmaker. 

His priorities for SMMUSD are strengthening the budget, improving student engagement, and “reaching historically disenfranchised cohorts of students.” 

“Funding is always the biggest challenge” for school districts, Kean said, and the same holds true for SMMUSD. Kean added that it was difficult to meet every stakeholder group’s expectations. “While we can do anything, we cannot do everything.” 

Board Member Maria Leon-Vazquez, has been a community advocate in Santa Monica for more than 40 years and has dedicated nearly 24 years to serving on the SMMUSD board. Her priorities include ensuring SMMUSD graduates get a “21st-century education” – one that leaves students “college and career ready, culturally and socially conscious, multilingual” and “life-long learners.” 

District accomplishments she highlighted reflect these priorities – among them, Leon-Vazquez highlights the creation of the K-12 Social Justice Program, the American Cultures and Ethnic Studies Program (ACES), and the adoption of the Parent Engagement Framework.

Jen Smith, current SMMUSD Board President, is running on a platform of “student growth, budget management, education policy, and community engagement.” She’s the newest member to the board of the three – this will be her second term if elected – but she has served SMMUSD for the last 15 years in several roles at Roosevelt Elementary, Lincoln Middle, and Santa Monica High School.  

During a candidate forum hosted by the Committee for Racial Justice and the League of Women Voters in Santa Monica, all three candidates spoke about the need to advance equity in the district.

 “I’m an immigrant from a working-class family, raised in Santa Monica, and I think I have a distinct perspective in terms of what the needs are for students like myself,” Leon-Vazquez said. The disparities she saw and experienced throughout her education have led her to advocate for marginalized students and families at SMMUSD. 

“There’s always that subtlety of racism in the city. That’s something we need to reflect on and students have to understand,” Leon-Vazquez said. One part of Leon-Vazquez’s approach is ensuring educators are getting diversity, equity, and inclusion training. 

Kean recounted a conversation he had with children from disadvantaged backgrounds in Long Beach. “I said, ‘Do you remember what you dreamed of being when you were little?’” The children responded, he said, “‘I cannot ever remember having a dream for my future.’” 

“How do we create that hope, that opportunity? How do we create programs at schools where everybody has that access?” Building a district that enables children to imagine their futures goes beyond the curriculum, he continued. 

Smith concurred, discussing the actions the district has taken to reach all students in the district by creating new pathways for students, including career training for students who aren’t planning to attend college, and bolstering social-emotional education throughout the district. 

When asked about the national resurgence of book banning in education, all three candidates disagreed with the practice. 

“We need to trust our educators because they know what books are appropriate for what ages,” Smith said, adding that she disagreed with censorship. “We should be able to talk about  things and be able to show our kids how to walk through the world.”

The candidates also agreed that cultural issues and current events should not be taboo topics in the classroom. Leon-Vazquez related her reasoning to her own education, saying there were entire histories she never learned about in school. She contended that school textbooks, purchased from an extremely limited pool of publishers, were “biased” and generally not suited to the task of preparing students to understand the world, from the local history of Santa Monica and beyond. “I think that’s a sin,” she said, continuing that the ACES program and other district interventions have addressed some of the shortcomings.

The common causes between the three candidates are clear.  

“We are a unified board,” Kean said during the candidate forum. “When it comes to our priorities, we don’t disagree over much, but we all have different voices.”

Kean, Leon-Vazquez, and Smith have endorsed each other and have received the endorsements of the other SMMUSD board members. All three are endorsed by Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights, SEIU Local 99 – Education Workers United, Community for Excellent Public Schools, and the Stonewall Democratic Club.