May twenty-second, 2012 may
have been one of the five or so most important days for Santa Monica-Malibu
schools in the last decade. It was the
day that the Santa Monica City Council voted 5-1 to support Agenda Item 8-B and
extend the Master Facilities Use Agreement and Related SupplementalAgreements with the Santa Monica- Malibu Unified School District for a term of ten
years with a subsequent five-year extension.
The item took about thirty minutes from start to finish,
however the event that transpired in those fairly undramatic moments solidified
a decidedly dramatic sea change in the fabric of Santa Monica politics.
The Master Facilities Use Agreement, which provides
stable ongoing funding from the City of Santa Monica to SMMUSD schools in
exchange for community access to school recreational facilities in off hours,
was forged by conflict. In 2004 when the
Agreement was first established, the City and the schools were such separate
entities that a relationship any deeper than polite acquaintance was controversial. Yet today, the true interdependence between
the two is deeply felt.
Of course, it is tragic that the State of
California has so underfunded its schools and undervalued its youth that it has
virtually knocked the State’s educational system to its knees. In decades past, both public education and
local municipalities were adequately funded and able to provide residents and
students with excellent services and preparation for the future. However, up and down this once-golden state,
funding for public education has been slashed, forcing our youth, and
ultimately our entire State to pay the consequences.
Santa Monica, however, was not about to allow the
State’s ongoing crisis to decimate its proudly excellent public schools. The correlation between excellent public education
and a strong city was, in the minds of many leaders in our community,
undeniable.
In the summer of 2003,
Community for Excellent Public Schools (CEPS) started discussing an Amendment
to the Charter of the City of Santa Monica, which would create an annual
contribution from the City of Santa Monica to the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified
School District.
CEPS co-chairs Shari Davis and Louise Jaffe with co-founder Ralph Mecher file proposed Charter Amendment with Santa Monica City Clerk Maria Stewart in January 2004 |
In January of 2004, CEPS
filed the proposed amendment to the City Charter, and by May, CEPS had raised
over $100,000 and gathered 15,000 signatures to qualify its proposed charter
amendment for the November 2004 municipal election.
Signature gathering |
Later that month, then
SMMUSD Superintendent John Deasy and City Manager Susan McCarthy reached an 11th-hour
compromise agreement -- the Facilities Use Agreement. After much political wrangling, heated
debate, and raised tempers, all parties signed off on the agreement, including
CEPS, the SMMUSD Board of Education, the Santa Monica-Malibu Council of PTAs
and, of course, the Santa Monica City Council.
CEPS agreed that it would not turn in its signatures and the Charter
Amendment was not placed on the ballot.
Flash forward eight years to
May 22, 2012. The relationship between the education community and City
leadership has developed into a strong and extremely productive
partnership. In its letter in support of
the Master Facilities Agreement renewal, CEPS co-chairs stated,
“CEPS is also extremely
grateful to the City Council for its willingness to create this compromise in
2004. Since that time, we have seen the relationship between the schools and
City leadership warm considerably into the proud partnership that exists today,
and this renewal of the agreement as proposed by City Manager Gould and his
staff is great proof that the partnership is mutually beneficial for both our
schools and City.
Education leaders have
joined forces with the City on a number of joint projects such as the “Buy
Local” program and the Youth Resource Team, as well as support for campaigns
that benefited the City, such as the TOT and UUT measures and, most recently,
the successful campaign for Propositions Y + YY.”
So many leaders have
courageously stepped forward to support the partnership between the schools and
the City. CEPS feels strongly that both
the City of Santa Monica and its schools are strengthened by this strong and
enduring partnership. The skies on
Sacramento’s fiscal horizon continue to darken, threatening not only schools,
but municipalities, and services for everyone in need. Only by joining together locally, will we
weather these storms and succeed in protecting all residents and students from
what will almost certainly be ongoing and, even increased hardships coming from
Sacramento.
Thank you to the Santa
Monica City Council, City Manager Rod Gould, the Santa Monica-Malibu Board of
Education, Superintendent Sandra Lyon and an army of education, business and
community leaders for helping make this partnership a reality.