Santa Monica-Malibu Unifed School District Presentation - Blog #10

A fellow classmate, Lisa Yamada, did a great job presenting on the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District. In the school district there are 11,900 students, 1,400 staff members and 18 schools ranging from elementary to high schools. The student makeup of the district is almost 50 percent Caucasian and 50 percent ethnic.

Yamada spent a day at two different schools to get a flavor of student life. The two schools she visited were Santa Monica High School and Olympic Continuation High School, for student that are behind in academic credits, need a smaller learning environment or have other continuation education needs.

The district has four schools in Malibu, a high school, two elementary schools (Webster, Juan Cabrillo) and the Point Dume Marine Science School.

The day Yamada spent at Santa Monica High School provided her with some valuable insight she was able to then pass on to the rest of the class. The school has nearly as many students as Seaver Undergraduate College at Pepperdine, with 3,200 students. The district has counteracted the feeling of a giant school by creating "houses," which act as smaller high schools for the students. There are six house at SMHS, and each house has a house principal, a teacher leader, counselor, two ad visors, a student outreach specialist, house assistant and approximately 550 student ranging from grades 9 to 12.

The school is inhabited by students from the surrounding Santa Monica homes and the homes in Pico that tend to have more ethnic students and a much smaller median family income. Despite the integration of the house there is still a lot of racial tension at SMHS. One of the counselors said that SMHS has a two-school phenomenon because students only associate with their own race during lunch.

My high school was much less diverse than SMHS and more expensive to attend. My catholic high school did recruit students from lower economic backgrounds by offering large scholarships. Two of my best friends came from a much lower economic status than the majority of the students and they outperformed the students that came from higher economic status. There was less diversity at my high school but there was no segregation between the students. Every student at my high school could have chosen to go to a public school, but by choosing to go to Catholic school they were their to learn and did not have the racial front that is appearing at SMHS.

This raises an interesting question of privatization of schools. If parents and students from every economic background have the option to choose what school to send their child too, would black parents only send their children to the school that were majority black, etc., etc. SMHS is outperforming many of the other public school in the nation in every aspect but they face many different racial issues.

I read an article from the SF Gate about the privatization of school. The article was poorly organized so it was confusing to understand when the article was covering politics versus the school privatization issue. The best quote from this story comes from a member of the school board.

"The biggest misfortune of focusing on (Edison) is that it's dividing us and costing us the
political goodwill we need to do big reforms, like eliminating the achievement gap
between ethnic groups," said Dan Kelly, school board vice president and the only
incumbent endorsed by the union and parents' lobby.

When school board members want to prevent privatization of schools because they eliminate the achievement gap between ethnic groups this issue has become more political than a social good standpoint.