By Neil Carrey Santa Monica The more things change... Editor:
For many years I have been very active in the Santa Monica-Malibu School District in many different ways, with much of my activities involved with the economic issues facing the district, including sitting as one of four members of a task force established by superintendent Neil Schmidt to look into the finances of the district. The one thing that has always been clear to me is that there has been great inequities with fundrais-ing among the various schools and as a result the schools have not been equal. I do feel the more affluent schools have a social obligation to share some of their wealth with the less affluent schools and I feel 15 percent of funds raised is small enough that it should not have a material affect on fundraising. Superintendent John Deasy’s proposal is much improved over some of the proposals from his predecessors in the past, which included sharing as much as 50 percent or putting a dollar limit on fundraising and then everything above that being shared with other schools. The only caution I would give is that in factoring in the redistribution of the 15 percent, grants to schools should be taken into consideration. Over the years, some of the less affluent schools have been able to get grants that were not available to some of the more affluent schools. As a result, while the fundraising efforts among those less affluent schools may have been substantially less than the more affluent schools, when factoring in grant funds, some of the less affluent schools may actually have raised outside funds which were substantially more than raised by the affluent schools. If grants are factored into the equation, then I fully support John’s proposal and do not believe it would reduce fundraising at those schools which must share.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 9, 2003. Read the original PDF.