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# Schools mull how to break ‘BB’ bread
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/schools-mull-how-to-break-bb-bread/
- Published: 2007-02-01T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T23:58:48.000Z
- Author: Melody Hanatani
- Tags: Education, Santa Monica, #archive-import

*Officials to revisit out-of-district permits Set a course*

SMMUSD HDQTRS With $268 million coming into the district to improve facilities and classroom instruction, school officials will begin the task of assessing the ideal size of the district in order to utilize the new resources with as little waste as possible.

Discussions at tonight’s Board of Education (BOE) meeting and a community workshop in two weeks will center primarily around the size of the district, and its facilities and classrooms. School officials will touch on how the moratorium on permits for out-of-district students has affected funding and enrollment, and whether it should revisit its permit policy.

“If we continue to implement the policy as it exists now, then it has implications for both our budget and staffing,” said Superintendent Dianne Talarico.

The district reached a peak enrollment of about 12,800 students during the 2003-04 school year. Currently, there are about 11,902 students — almost 900 less than just three years ago. The losses are largely attributable to new limitations restricting the number of out-of-district students admitted, costing SMMUSD about $5 million over a three-year period, Talarico said.

Tonight’s talks come almost three months after voters passed Measure BB, a bond measure that brings in hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade the facilities in the district. Approximately 67 percent of voters approved the measure.

“If I have a couple of schools that might be under capacity or under enrolled and there are existing portables,” Talarico said, “one of the things we promised is we would look at the disposal of those portables and build classrooms to replace them.”

Talarico went on to say that replacing the portable classrooms, however, might now be dependent on the district’s enrollment figures and whether plans to alter the out-of-district permit system are in the cards.

“I have to really think about whether that would be in the best interest to do so, because why add space if I have the space there?” Talarico said. “Before I take a thoughtful recommendation forward for projects for Measure BB, I want to get a handle on what the board’s thinking is and what the community is thinking about the right size of the district.”

The discussion on student enrollment also ties in with the Facilities Master Plan, which is expected to be released for public comment in late March or early April. The Facilities Master Plan assesses the current state of existing facilities.

“I feel like we’re in a crunch time,” Talarico said.

All of these factors could affect the way school officials spend Measure BB money because declining enrollment negatively impacts funding from the state.

“We have the ability to decide the right percentage of permit students to keep the district at a constant level because revenue fluctuates on the number of students,” said Board President Kathy Wisnicki on Tuesday.

In the late 1990s, a “liberal” permit policy resulted in about 25 percent of the entire district’s enrollment consisting of students from outside the district, Wisnicki said.

In 2002, the school board decided to place a moratorium on the number of students from outside the district, limiting enrollment to students who were children of employees of the district or in the city governments in Santa Monica or Malibu. Students whose siblings were already permitted in the district were also allowed in.

The moratorium was put into place shortly before Emily Bloomfield took her seat on the Board of Education. The recently re-elected school board member said she was in favor of the moratorium because it was a way of solving a short-term financial problem.

“It was a cost to our facilities and overcrowding the school and classroom,” Bloomfield said.

Today, less than 17 percent of students in the district are from outside Santa Monica and Malibu.

“What are the implications if it continues?” Wisnicki asked. “How do we strategically go about letting students in so we don’t have a sudden influx in one year?”

The community workshop is tentatively scheduled for Feb. 13.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on February 1, 2007.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/020107.pdf?ref=smdp.com)