By Kevin Herrera
Daily Press Staff Writer

PICO BOULEVARD — Tear down the fences and make schools into community centers. Convert vacant retail stores in Santa Monica Place into classrooms to ease overcrowding. Plant community gardens in elementary schools so youth can learn about nutrition and establish healthy eating habits. Hold classes in local businesses to teach finance.

These are just some of the progressive ideas put forth by residents here and the city of Malibu on Saturday during the first of several community meetings that will shape school use and construction over the next 20 years.

With the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District’s top decision-makers in attendance, roughly 100 parents, students and concerned community members gathered at the Sheraton Defina Hotel for a day of free-flowing discussions in which participants were encouraged to “think big, bold and ‘brizany,’” — a combination of brilliant and zany — a term created specifically for the brain-storming session.

While many found it difficult to think outside the box without worrying about the consequences, overall, the meeting was “a great first start,” said Bobbie Hill, a partner with Concordia, LLC, an urban design firm working with the district in molding the Facilities Master Plan (www.ourschoolplan.com) — a guide for school upgrades, land purchases and new school construction in the district.

“People have to find their comfort zone, and that doesn’t happen in one meeting,” Hill said. “Some may have some ideas and be timid about sharing them. We see that time and time again. We just have to get people comfortable with more meetings and get others to jump on the bandwagon.”

Generating interest in the Facilities Master Plan is as important as generating creative ideas, school Superintendent John Deasy said.

“People are here to inform us so it is important to get as many people involved as possible. We need to get everyone engaged in the remaining four sessions we have scheduled throughout the year,” Deasy said. “I know this community enough to count on there being some fabulous thoughts and ideas. … We (the district) are not predisposed to anything.”

Following an introduction from Concordia, those in attendance, including several school board members and students from Santa Monica and Malibu high schools, broke off into groups led by education professionals in areas of educational programs, school site construction and community outreach. Attendees worked around the district’s Strategic Plan, developed in 2002, and its set of goals, including lower class sizes, equal access to child care and afterschool programs, and a standards-based curriculum.

A concept that seemed to fit the Strategic Plan’s requirements as well as utilize scarce open space was Community Schools, a land-use formula that brings the community onto the campus by incorporating senior centers, public libraries and performing arts centers into the school site. It is a mixed-use concept that is gathering steam across the country.

Concordia has helped build several of these schools, including the Henry Ford Academy in Dearborn, Mich., a high school/museum where students learn in a working environment. The intent is to utilize space as much as possible while providing students with the best access to materials in a learning environment that sparks critical thinking.

Samohi senior Jesus Contreras, 18, said he would prefer attending schools where there are no walls that close off the outside world.

“We need to make schools more welcoming instead of a jail where you must stay in the fences,” he said. “The gates make you feel like you’re forced to stay inside for six hours. It’s like a lock up.”

Teacher Pam Finn was in support of moving schools out into the city, a model known as extended learning communities.

“We could have a main campus and then a group of satellite campuses that would focus on particular subjects like art or math and science,” she said. “Maybe we could hold the campuses, say, in a hospital for a few years and when that program becomes less desirable, maybe the kids will want to move over to an art museum for another course. By having the classes in businesses we could increase internships, lower class sizes.”

But what about security? What about college requirements? Despite being known as an enclave for forward thinking, some parents were not ready to charge into the ‘brizany’ without a discussion on consequences.

“It’s not surprising,” said Mike Fox, author of “Exploring The Nature of Creativity,” and a lecturer at the International Center for Studies in Creativity. “As we get older, we tend to lose our creativity because we are more inundated with reality and all the responsibility, and regrettably, the limitations that come with it. We are simply no longer care-free, so it’s hard to get back into the mindset of thinking ‘out of the box’ as everyone says.”

Concordia’s Hill stressed that the brainstorming session was geared toward hearing from the entire community, but admitted the students usually are the most creative, not because of their age, but because of their day-to-day experiences at school.

“They are there every day and know what works best and what doesn’t,” Hill said. “They are also the customers, so they know how to be served best.”

The concept of mixed-school sites, Hill said, while seemingly practical, is progressive. Not so ‘brizany’ after all.

“When we first introduced this whole idea of small schools spread out in the community, people thought that was outrageous,” Hill said. “Now that’s becoming common conversation, but the reality is its still not happening as common practice. We are so wrapped around this old idea of how school should be built that something as practical as community schools is thought of being weird.”