School Board Approves District Gift Policy

Hannah Heineman
Mirror staff writer
  
   After nearly a year of discussion marked by controversy, the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District’s Board of Education approved, by a 4 to 2 vote, a new district-wide gift policy at last Thursday’s meeting.
   To take effect immediately, the new policy is, according to the District staff report, an attempt “to achieve a greater level of equalization” in the education of students throughout the District.
   The cornerstone of the policy is the establishment of an Equity Fund which will be administered by the Santa Monica Malibu Education Foundation. It, together with the Board “will, annually, distribute block grants to all schools to address district and local school goals and mitigate the effects of the unequalized enrichment of District schools.”
   The Equity Fund will consist of “fifteen percent of all cash gifts to either the District or any department or organization thereof or individual schools, donated during a school year,” or from grants and gifts to the District.
   The new policy also includes criteria for the acceptance of gifts and exempts certain gifts “from a mandatory contribution to the Equity Fund. This policy will return to the Board of Education for review each year prior to October 1.”
   While three of her colleagues agreed with Board member Maria Leon-Vazquez that “this little bit of 15 percent is at least some form of an equalizer for all our kids in the District,” Board members Michael Jordan and Shane McCloud voted against the policy.
   Jordan read a lengthy statement prior to the Board vote on the policy, stating, as he did earlier in the discussion of the gift policy that he favored a voluntary Equity Fund rather than a mandatory fund because a voluntary fund “would be something every family, business and donor in the District would support, that it would have the potential for raising a much larger amount of money than a mandatory fund and that it would require much-reduced administrative entanglements and discretionary decisions about exemptions and other issues related to the fund.”
   He went on to say that he believes the establishment of mandatory Equity Fund now has “alienated those in both Malibu and Santa Monica who oppose a mandatory process. Ironically, in my view, because we did not first try a voluntary fund, it is entirely possible that in a couple of years there will be no funds, voluntary, mandatory or otherwise, from Malibu. Our District is on the verge of a very difficult divorce process, in my view, and the groundswell of new support in Malibu for the creation of a Malibu Unified School District is a direct result of the way we proceeded around this issue.”
   McCloud did not elaborate on his nay vote at Thursday’s meeting, but, in March, he agreed with Jordan that a mandatory fund would face legal challenges, and told his colleagues “the gap between the haves and the have-nots is crystal clear but I don’t believe this is the way to fill in that gap. I believe it’s inappropriate to alter someone’s generosity. It’s a clear principle to me. We don’t need the increased bureaucracy for the management of these funds. I believe we are going to have a community backlash.”
   McCloud is a teacher in the L.A. Unified School District.
   Jordan, a professor at Pepperdine University, is the only Malibu resident on the current Board.
   Prior to voting in favor of the policy, Board member Emily Bloomfield said it “is a broad set of objectives and the success of the policy will ultimately rest on its implementation.”
   The Board also heard a report from the District’s Director of Special Education Cindy Atlas on the District’s progress in responding to the corrective actions requested by the California State Department of Education and the Special Education Strategic Plan that was developed by parents in conjunction with District staff members earlier this year.
   The ten Special Education initiatives that were proposed in the Strategic Plan for 2004-2005 were Cost/Benefit Planning, Prevention Services, Policies and Procedures, Curriculum Development, Instructional Materials, Professional Development, Departmental Support, Department Reorganization, Record-Keeping and Accountability.
   In her progress report, Atlas cited quarterly meetings of the Special Education Strategic Plan Steering Committee, after school intervention classes, a preschool diagnostic assessment center, selection of teachers for a Malibu Learning Resource Center, the development of a policies and procedures manual for administrative training and Special Education teacher training and curriculum guides development.
   She added that there will be additional professional development this year, the Special Education department will be reorganized, record keeping, including computerized IEPs, will be improved and an annual parent survey will begin next spring.
   Claudia Landis, a member of the Special Education Steering Committee, called for “disbanding” it and creating a “Special Education Implementation Committee” which could be a subcommittee of the Special Education District Advisory Committee.