The Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District board is preparing to vote on the district’s first Safe Routes to School policy, and board members at an Oct. 29 meeting pressed for better traffic and crash information from the cities around its campuses.
The Board of Education reviewed Board Policy and Administrative Regulation 5142.2, Safe Routes to School Program, as a discussion item. It returns for a vote Nov. 19.
The policy states that walking, bicycling and other active transport to school reduce vehicle traffic and air pollution near campuses, and it calls for the district to develop and encourage safe routes activities with the cities of Santa Monica and Malibu. Staff said it aligns with work the district has pursued with Santa Monica for 15 years. The regulation lists strategies including safety education, promoting Santa Monica’s Bike It / Walk It Days, partnering with local law enforcement and considering safe routes when designing school facilities.
“We won’t do it alone,” Frank Dussan, director of student services, said. “We’re going to partner with the cities to ensure that our kids are safe walking to and from school.”
Board member Jon Kean asked about emails from the public suggesting the document was missing material. The draft is based on a California School Boards Association model. “Because this all comes from CSBA, we’re not making this up,” Kean said.
Chief Operations Officer Carey Upton said the regulation has four items rather than the model’s eight because staff left out items that assume a district has its own school police or other authority it lacks.
“We are a school district. We do not own, manage, or maintain the streets,” Upton said. The district supports the cities’ grant applications for safe routes projects, he said, but cannot apply for that money itself.
Of the omitted items, he said, “Those are things we actually don’t have the ability to do.”
Board Vice President Laurie Lieberman cited a recent “kerfuffle with the city of Santa Monica.”
“I would like to look at this as an opportunity to improve our partnership,” she said.
Citing suggestions from a member of the public, Lieberman asked for regular updates on crashes near schools, saying “none of us generally do know what kinds of accidents occur.” She also proposed inviting city officials to explain Vision Zero and how it affects schools.
“What’s important to me is less about what we literally say; it’s what we do and what we understand and how we work together, because I do think we’re all on the same team,” Lieberman said.
Upton said the city’s decisions are informed by traffic data, “but it’s not information that we have received, and I do think it’s something we can request as part of our process.”
Dussan said the policy aims “to open channels of communication and data sharing” and ensure “that nothing falls through the cracks.” He said he believed it called for quarterly reports to the board, though the draft says updates will come “as needed.” What the reports include depends on what the city agrees to share, he said.
Board member Maria Leon-Vazquez urged restoring crossing guards on major streets such as Ocean Park, Pico and Wilshire. Upton said city-provided guards have been reduced since COVID and the city has three to four openings. The next hire will go near Ocean Park, he said: “As soon as they hire someone, that’s the next place we’re going to put them.”
Upton said the district has tried to move drop-off and pickup off the street, but the Roosevelt and Franklin campuses are about half the recommended size for their enrollment. “So we really couldn’t figure out solutions there,” he said. The district hopes to add drop-off solutions at Rogers in the next couple of years and at Edison “if we can work it out with the city.”
In Malibu, coordination is “a little more sporadic,” Upton said, adding that the policy “allows us to maybe make that a little more formal.”
Board member Stacy Rouse noted that Pacific Coast Highway is not under the city of Malibu’s control and that canyon road closures can keep buses and staff from reaching schools. “Relationship is everything, and knowledge is everything,” she said.
Upton said the district has written in support of county Public Works grants to reduce rockfalls and mudslides in Malibu Canyon. City and county officials in Malibu have told the district its support helps, he said: “Whenever we lend our voice as a district to these grants to these projects, it does strengthen it because people care about kids.”