Board votes to give Samohi funds
CITY HALL Bemoaned for its dilapidated structures, crumbling ceilings and cracked athletic facilities, Santa Monica High School is about to receive a major facelift.
The Samohi community is celebrating after the Board of Education on Thursday voted to support a recommendation by the Measure BB Advisory Committee to funnel millions of more dollars to improve the facilities at the aging campus.
The decision followed more than two hours filled with pleas and testimonies from students, parents, teachers and school advocates, demanding more funding be allocated to Santa Monica High School than what was originally proposed by district staff.
“Yesterday was such a wonderful example of what grassroots parents can do in a community like Santa Monica and Malibu, where everyone can come into a process — in this case, a school board meeting — and express their views,” said Elizabeth Stearns, an organizer of the newly formed group, the Coalition for an Excellent Samohi Campus, on Friday.
The organization shot a letter to district officials last weekend to argue that a staff proposal to allocate funding under Measure BB was flawed, shortchanging Santa Monica High School, which it contends is in dire need of improvements. Members of the group argue that allocation should be based on need.
The $268 million school building bond measure to enhance safety and better learning conditions at all of the district’s campuses was passed by voters in November 2006. Many of the proposed projects under Measure BB were identified under the draft Facilities Master Plan.
The staff proposal in which the grassroots organization was referring to would give approximately $38.4 million of the currently available $149 million in construction monies to Santa Monica High School, while Malibu High would receive $27.5 million and Edison Language Academy, another campus in need of attention, would see $24.5 million of the funding pie.
The board was faced with three proposals on Thursday — the original staff proposal; a recommendation from the Measure BB Advisory Committee that would increase funding to Samohi to $57 million, while decreasing Malibu’s share to $13.5 million and holding off all middle and elementary school projects, with the exception of Edison Language Academy, to a later time; and a new alternative staff proposal to increase Samohi funding to $57 million while maintaining Malibu’s allocation of $27.5 million and keeping the projects for Lincoln and John Adams middle schools.
The advisory committee’s recommendation earmarks $111 million worth of projects, leaving approximately $38 million available for use at a later time.
Gleam Davis, the co-chair of the advisory committee, stressed that the amount of funding to Malibu High School remains the same under their recommendation and that funding to Malibu Middle School, which shares a campus with the high school, would be postponed. “(The recommendation) does not say ‘let’s just do the high school,’” Davis said during the meeting. “It says ‘let’s do the high school first.’”
It was perhaps the busiest and most well-attended school board meeting in recent history, as the City Council Chambers and the lobby of City Hall flooded with Samohi, and some Malibu High School, supporters. Members of the Coalition for an Excellent Samohi Campus held a brief rally shortly before the board began discussing the Measure BB projects.
The board seemed generally supportive of the advisory committee’s recommendation, with Ralph Mechur, the recently inducted school board member, being the lone vote in opposition. Mechur said he was more inclined to support the modified staff recommendation because it included immediate funding for the middle schools.
THE CEILING IS FALLING Starting shortly after the clock struck 8 p.m., more than 65 people waited in line to voice their opinions about what schools the bulk of the Measure BB funding should benefit.
Trent Nelson, an eighth grader at Lincoln Middle School, spoke of his visits to his older brother’s junior varsity games, observing the gum on the floor and the obstructed view of the scoreboard from the bleachers.
Lindsey Nakatani, a freshman at Santa Monica High School and member of the junior varsity volleyball team, testified about the condition of the south gym, commenting that the ceiling tiles were falling down.
“Our facilities aren’t functioning properly and we spend a lot of practice time trying to clean that up,” she said.
Constructed in 1910, Santa Monica High School is the flagship high school in the city and just one of three in the district, including Malibu and Olympic High School, the continuation high school. It is said that approximately 80 percent of the students in the district will matriculate through Samohi.
Many of the parents and teachers that spoke in support of Samohi said the ugly facade and dilapidated facilities mask the educational excellence of the high school, scaring away some parents of young students who might only enroll their children in public schools through the end of middle school.
“Parents don’t see the educational opportunities at Samo,” said Jon Kean, the president of the PTA at Roosevelt Elementary School.
The minority in the audience — the parents that made the long trek to City Hall from Malibu — spoke in favor of giving Malibu its fair share of the Measure BB pie and that their high school presents its own set of challenges. Some parents criticized the modifications to the staff proposal, saying that the process was being hijacked at the 11th hour.
David Resnick was one of the few advisory committee members that voted against the committee’s recommendation, hoping to seek restoration of funding to the middle schools. Though the advisory committee’s proposal would postpone funding only for Malibu Middle School, the plan would still affect the students at the high school, he said.
The district staff’s proposal calls for the reconstruction of the middle school wing into a new two-story classroom building that includes three science labs.
The new middle school building is not to be looked at as simply a middle school improvement, said Resnick, whose youngest child graduated from Samohi about 15 years ago.
Laura Rosenthal, a Malibu High School parent and member of the advisory committee, said the comments made by the Samohi students about the conditions at their high school are very similar to the same issues that the teenagers at Malibu High School face.
“The schools are very similar,” she said.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 20, 2007. Read the original PDF.