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# Stop poaching other districts’ brightest
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/stop-poaching-other-districts-brightest-editor/
- Published: 2007-02-20T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-24T00:05:22.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Malibu, #archive-import

*By Mark Shepherd*

Recent letters by Dr. Lisette Bauersachs expressing outrage at the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District’s policy of importing students have been right on the money (“Moratorium means more students,” Feb. 16, page 4). This policy must stop. Fewer students in the classroom equals better education. Nobody questions that.

Moreover, importing students from other districts actually hurts those surrounding districts. Here we have Santa Monica siphoning students from nearby districts, students whose parents obviously care about their education. The result is these active parents won’t participate in their own neighborhood schools. Schools need parents who care and work for improvements and better resources. I know an elementary principal at a Los Angeles school. He hates Santa Monica’s student immigration policy for this very reason.

Our district’s scramble for more and more money (which on the face of it is hard to fathom... What other district gets millions upon millions of dollars from a host city?) to deal with declining enrollment is yet another example how our lone political party — Santa Monicans for Renters Rights — has hurt our community. SMRR, despite its oxymoronic name, has done all it can to keep renters indentured to landlords instead of helping current and new residents buy their own homes and gain economic security. Renters have less children than those who own. Residents without children naturally have a lower stake in school quality. Enrollment, and community-wide support for schools, will continue to decline, thanks to the SMRR.

But this trend represents a great opportunity for our schools — if officials change direction. The current policy of importing 1,700 students (some 20 percent of the Santa Monica-Malibu school population) ought to enrage every local parent with school-age children. It hurts our kids. It hurts surrounding school districts.

So who does it help? School bureaucrats and politicians who pathologically cannot shrink operations. But this is what needs to happen. If the current school board cannot show them the way, we will elect board members who will.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on February 20, 2007.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/022007.pdf?ref=smdp.com)