By Jason Islas
Lookout Staff

November 17, 2011 -- The Santa Monica-Malibu School Board will continue discussing a controversial wealth redistribution policy Thursday night that would weaken the authority of Parent Teacher Associations to spend money.

The Districtwide Funding proposal could prohibit local PTAs from spending money on hiring or training new personnel for programs such as literacy initiatives and would transfer that authority to the Santa Monica-Malibu Education Foundation, a non-profit group.

“With PTA funds, people at different sites are purchasing staff, like nurses and teachers' aids,” School Board Member Oscar de la Torre told The Lookout Wednesday. He said that this has given an edge to schools in upscale neighborhoods with parents who can contribute more time and money.

According to a report presented to the board by Superintendent Sandra Lyon, some schools are spending an extra $2,100 per student while others can only afford to spend an extra $65 per student.

Creating a centralized policy has gained widespread support in Santa Monica in the wake of recent State budget cuts, De la Torre said.

“This community believes that it's no longer acceptable to have practices and policies that perpetuate extreme inequality,” he said.

Santa Monica for Renters' Rights, the City's powerful tenants group that helped elect six of the seven board members, recently released an official statement supporting the Districtwide Fundraising proposal “to achieve social and economic justice for all students.”

SMRR Co-Chair Patricia Hoffman, a former School Board member, told The Lookout Wednesday that “the district has to have oversight over all of the schools.”

“They have to make sure that some children aren't receiving one kind of education and other children are receiving a different kind of education,” Hoffman said.

How exactly the district plans to do that still hasn't been hammered out. De la Torre believes that more public discussion needs to take place.

Still, not everyone is convinced that the district's good intentions will yield positive results.

John Miller, a long-time fundraiser for public schools and parent of six former SMMUSD students, wrote the School Board a letter last week warning that the proposed policy will have unintended consequences.

“Voluntary donations by Malibu parents (and Franklin and Roosevelt parents) to their children's schools will drop by hundreds of thousands of dollars per year,” Miller wrote.

As a result, wealthy families will leave the public school system, further reducing state and federal funding to the district as a whole, according to Miller.

Miller suggested that the School Board convene a task force of professional fundraisers to consult in drafting an alternative policy that would create change by “ raising the bottom up rather than by taking the top down.”

Miller's arguments are in line with a policy drafted by former Superintendent John Deasy that requires anyone donating money or material to a specific school to also contribute 15 percent of the value of the donation to an Equity Fund in 2004.

The polict was drafted in response to fundraising inequities that resulted in some schools being equipped with PTA-funded computer labs and heated aquariums, while other schools had to ask parents for paper and writing utensils.

The current policy, as it is proposed, will not affect equipment donations. The School Board will be soliciting public comment on the issue at Thursday's meeting.