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# School gift-sharing is a good start
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/school-gift-sharing-is-a-good-start-editor/
- Published: 2003-12-13T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T03:19:42.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Malibu, #archive-import

*By Cyndi Mladinov and Tynan Schmidt*

My husband Tynan and I are McKinley PTA’s co-presidents. We fully support Superintendent John Deasy and the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Board of Education as leaders concerned with educating all of our children in a manner that is equitable and independent of location within the district. The gift policy is a step in the right direction to help close the achievement gap and ensure that donations are made that offer education solutions for all of the children in our district, and not just a few. We support this policy because it is a start and is long overdue. However, it does not go far enough. All children have a constitutional right to a quality education, not only in the basics, but in the arts as well, no matter what their financial or geographical situation is. By not addressing the inequities in fundraising for individual schools now, we do a great disservice to our students and our community as a whole.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 13, 2003.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/121303.pdf?ref=smdp.com)