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# School district split regressive
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/school-district-split-regressive-editor/
- Published: 2004-08-30T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T04:58:51.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Malibu, #archive-import

*By David Sirkin Santa Monica*

Make no mistake about it, a split-off of Malibu from the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District would represent a regressive step. The regressive nature of the proposed split is illustrated quite clearly by one of the goals of the group proposing it, as reported in the Daily Press on Aug. 26, to allow Malibu schools to collect more easily voluntary contributions from Malibu residents for school programs that the district now finds too expensive to provide for all schools in the unified district. As a facile alternative to mobilizing politically to increase funding for all the schools in the metropolitan area, or in the state, or in the nation, such campaigns for donations to local schools are popular across the country. While they are motivated by people’s laudable desires to provide generously for their children’s education, they also must be seen as part of a pattern of continued efforts by the wealthiest Americans to separate themselves from the rest of society and its problems, and to abdicate their responsibility to contribute to public programs that benefit the entire population.

These efforts go against the liberal and communitarian goals that have guided our country since its early days, but now have been advanced much more in other countries than here. The evolution of our public school system is a prime example. The idea of public schools was for the community as a whole to provide good education opportunities for all its children, but this goal has been perverted by the economic segregation of our society, combined with the persistence of small school districts in many parts of the country, so that we now have so-called public schools for which the price of admission is the price of a $1 million home, making them more exclusive than the most exclusive private schools.

According to the Daily Press, Tom Sorce, the leader of the group wanting to split Malibu off, says he believes that the more schools are controlled locally, the better they are. This is a view that seems to be held by a large percentage of Americans, but I doubt there is much evidence to support it. Certainly there are some very fine public schools in small districts where most of the parents and school board members are wealthy and well-educated, but there are also some very inadequate schools in poor districts where relatively poorly educated parents and other adults in the community have tried to manage their own schools.

For example, in New Jersey, where I was once a public school teacher, the state took away local control of some urban school districts because they were so mismanaged. In Germany, the country that according to some analyses has the best public schools in the world, schools are run on a state level, proving that a high degree of local control is not necessary for good schools.

Small local school districts are wasteful. Children in one part of a region, or even one part of a nation, need to learn pretty much the same thing as those in another part. The duplication of curriculum efforts hundreds or thousands of times across the nation is unnecessary. In fact, a central panel of top experts could probably do a better job than is currently done in even the wealthiest local districts today.

But perhaps what is most wrong about small school districts is their contributing effect towards segregation and inequality. Affluent couples flee from urban areas when they have children, not only to escape violent crime, but also to find “better schools.” Meanwhile, the children of poor families are not allowed to attend “public” schools outside their impoverished districts.

No, the direction of progress is towards larger, not smaller school districts. We should be trying to create a Southern California school system, if not a statewide school system for the effective and equal schooling of all the children in the state. The creation of a Malibu school system to allow the wealthy residents of Malibu to provide well for the education of their own children without having to be concerned about anyone else’s would be a step backwards.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 30, 2004.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/083004.pdf?ref=smdp.com)