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# New high school to serve SM parolees
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/new-high-school-to-serve-sm-parolees/
- Published: 2005-01-20T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T06:01:37.000Z
- Author: John Wood
- Tags: Education, Malibu, #archive-import

*District officials looking for a suitable site for campus*

DISTRICT HDQRTRS. — Recent parolees and expelled students soon will have their own high school, if education officials approve plans for the new learning facility tonight as expected.

State funding is in place for the school and local officials are searching for a suitable site anywhere in Santa Monica, according to Superintendent of Schools John Deasy, who said the school likely will serve just 15 to 20 students.

“At this point it’s site dependent,” he said Wednesday. “We could open it, relatively as soon as we find a site.”

The school will have, at most, two to three classrooms and will serve only Santa Monica and Malibu students, Deasy said. The idea is to separate out the students with the most severe problems, and provide them with one-on-one instruction. The district as a whole has some 4,000 high schoolers.

Billed by local officials as a “Community Day School,” the school would be staffed by credentialed teachers who would “collaborate with district counselors, psychologists... and with the county office of education, law enforcement, probation and human services agency staff who work with at-risk youth,” according to district documents.

Deasy said about 15 local youths already have been identified for the program, which will receive slightly more funding from the state, per pupil, than traditional secondary schools. Santa Monica and Malibu high schools receive about $5,100 a year, per pupil, based on average daily attendance.

“These are kids who have had struggles... They’re kids that are experiencing trouble,” Deasy said. “It’s a win on both sides.”

> “These are kids who have had struggles... They’re kids that are experiencing trouble. It’s a win on both sides.” — JOHN DEASY Superintendent of Schools

Ilene Straus, principal at Santa Monica High School, said the new school will help ease the burden on her 3,500-student school, which hopes to shed about 1,000 students in coming years by opening two smaller campuses with 400 to 500 students each.

“We as a district, and as a school that serves a large high school population, need options for students where they can be successful,” Straus said. “We don’t have a lot of options in a district our size, and I’m really pleased that the district administration has moved quickly to set up a community day school.”

Straus added the new school will compliment but be very different than Olympic High School, an alternative school of about 150 students who either have behavioral problems or need to make up credits quickly to graduate on time. The new school will have fewer distractions and will be available to students who are expelled from the other schools in the district, Straus said.

“We’ve felt for a long time that we need some options that work,” she said.

Priority for seats in the new school would be given first to those students expelled from other campuses. Next would be students who recently had been incarcerated and, thirdly, students who were transferred to the school against their wishes through a district referral process, documents show.

In order to leave the school and return to a traditional campus, students would have to complete the requirements of their expulsion or any specific probation requirements, as well as meet with district officials.

Parents and other community members who watch the schools closely raised concerns this week about the school and its future students. Several residents sent e-mails to other parents on a Samohi distribution list expressing their concerns, apparently under the impression the school would drain resources from other local schools, while serving expelled students from all over Los Angeles County.

Deasy addressed those issues on Wednesday.

“They’re current students,” he said. “It’s not like we’re looking for new students. We know who they are. It’s a very good thing.”

As to the viability of the program, Santa Monica-Malibu school board member Shane McLoud, a teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District for the past eight years, wrote this to the concerned parents: “I also have been aware of the discussion to create this type of school, and it’s exactly what we need to create a more personal learning community for those students who don’t do well in typical schools...

“I know first-hand that these types of schools benefit both the students who need the new school (and its smaller class size and better trained personnel) and the classroom that they are leaving — allowing the students and teachers to spend their time on teaching and learning, rather than behavioral issues.”

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 20, 2005.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/012005.pdf?ref=smdp.com)