Board seeks to find perfect permit tally
CITY HALL — Students in the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District will still be allowed to attend classes even if they’ve been forced to move outside its boundaries because of an involuntarily loss of housing.
The Santa Monica-Malibu Unified school board on Thursday enhanced protections for students under its Interdistrict Attendance Policy, which strictly regulates enrollment for students who live outside of the district.
Students were already covered under the policy from involuntary evictions due to rental units being removed from the housing market, buildings being red-tagged or evictions to accommodate owner occupancy of an apartment.
However, the board felt it was necessary to be more specific about the protections, as an increasing number of its students have been affected by the rapidly changing housing market.
The school board also extended a moratorium on issuing new interdistrict permits — approved in 2001 — in an attempt to decrease current class sizes. Students enrolled who lose their homes involuntarily will not be affected. The moratorium would have ended this year if the board did not extend it.
Interdistrict permits are granted to students who apply from outside the district to attend SMMUSD schools, as the district has become desirable due to high student achievement and its large percentage of highly qualified teachers. Preference is given to those students whose parents work for the district or have siblings currently attending a Santa Monica-Malibu school.
Students on permit, which must be renewed on an annual basis, can have their access revoked for violating district policy.
“We are being gentrified out of Santa Monica at an increasing rate, and one can only expect that to continue,” said Oscar de la Torre, a school board member who works with youth in the Pico Neighborhood, a working-class area that has been hit hard by rapidly increasing rents and the loss of affordable housing to condo conversions.
“We felt that losing one’s home is traumatic enough, but forcing someone to leave their friends, their community and the schools in which they’ve attended, that can be very disruptive to a student.”
Under the Ellis Act, a state law passed in 1986, landlords are allowed to evict tenants if they are removing rental units from the housing market. The law is intended to afford landlords the opportunity to get out of the property management business, however, opponents charge most landlords use Ellis to convert apartments into condos or townhouses.
With the median price of a one-bedroom, one-bathroom condo in Santa Monica hovering around $500,000, many families are unable to purchase their converted units and are, in turn, forced to relocate.
“Because housing prices are so high in Santa Monica, many families have to move out of the area to find a place to live,” said Emily Bloomfield, a school board member.
The district’s permit policyhas been a challenging topic for the board since it was enacted to help raise money for schools. For each student who attends, the district receives money from the state.As enrollment dips, the district earns less money to help pay for programs like sports, art and music.
The trick has been to find a balance, according to school board members.
When the moratorium was issued, more than 20 percent of students were on permit, said Kathy Wisnicki, vice president of the school board. Classes were overcrowded and local taxpayers were calling for a change. With the moratorium in place, Wisnicki said the number of permit students is around 17 percent of the total student body.
By continuing the moratorium, Wisnicki and other board members said they can stabilize class sizes and possibly reduce them in the next few years.
The board did request a cost-benefits analysis to determine what the appropriate level of permit students should be in order for the district to receive the most money possible without jeopardizing smaller class sizes.
The analysis will be conducted by the district’s Financial Oversight Committee, according to Wisnicki.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 17, 2006. Read the original PDF.