By Jonathan Friedman
Lookout News

June 8, 2010 --Following the failure of Measure A, the $198-per-parcel tax measure, the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District (SMMUSD) has embarked on an ambitious 60-day fundraising project with a goal to reverse some of the cuts for next year’s budget.

The Board of Education last week voted to slash the District’s 2010-11 spending plan by $7.1 million to accommodate an eight-figure deficit caused by reduced funding from the State, the District’s largest revenue source. (See: 05 29 2010 School District Funding Measure Loses.)

This campaign will likely only bring in one-time money, and therefore will do nothing to attack the SMMUSD’s structural deficit. District officials are looking into long-term, ongoing-revenue possibilities, including a new parcel tax measure that could go before the voters as soon as November.

Those wishing to contribute to the fundraising campaign, which is headed by the Santa Monica-Malibu Education Foundation (SMMEF) with assistance from volunteers from the PTA and other sources, will have choices as to where their money will go. The Board of Education on Thursday OK’d three so-called funding buckets.

One bucket will be dedicated to bringing back laid-off elementary school classroom teachers. The other two buckets will be designated for two programs apiece. One will be for counselors and secondary school classroom teachers and the other will be for elementary school music and elementary school libraries. Money designated for those buckets will be divided evenly to benefit both programs in those buckets.

Board of Education member Jose Escarce said the purpose of coupling programs in two buckets is because programs that inspire passion will more easily attract donations, while other programs “arguably are just as necessary, but they won’t arouse the same passion.”

Planning for the fundraising campaign began almost immediately after it appeared Measure A would not win. SMMEF Executive Director Linda Gross told the board she had received a large number of phone calls and e-mails from people wanting to help, thus showing that there is “enthusiasm and desire to reinstate (programs affected by) these cuts.”

“This is a real opportunity,” Gross said. “We have reached now, with our partnership with the PTA and other community groups, to really involve more people than have ever been involved before. And frankly, fundraising is about relationships. It’s about who knows who and who you can talk to.”

She added, “We are not just going out to parents for this campaign. We are going to talk to some businesses, some alumni, some leadership-level donors.

The District must collect the money by mid-August to allow for the staff to come back.

Gross said the SMMEF will soon also be working on long-term fundraising plans. Long-term fundraising and ongoing revenue sources were topics during a

portion of the meeting at with the Financial Oversight Committee (FOC) gave a report to the board. FOC member Joan Chu Reese said District officials need to “put away our prior beliefs about how we raise money.”

“The same approach will fall short not because it’s ill-intended or poorly executed, on the contrary, it will fall short by definition because it is an approach to raise a certain amount of funds and not more,” she said. “And it is necessary, but not sufficient.”

FOC Chair Cynthia Torres said the District needs to develop a long- range strategic plan on fundraising. The FOC presented three topics, or charges, it said the District should focus on during the next fiscal year. They include new revenue sources, developing a financial management plan for special education and analyzing financial practices in other Districts that could be done in the SMMUSD. District staff will fine tune these charges and bring them back to the board for consideration at an upcoming meeting.

Details of how long-term fundraising would work and who would be charged with what tasks, including how much involvement should come from the FOC were discussed. That will be sorted out soon, but all officials agreed that “collaboration” was the best approach.

Also, the board voted for a tax measure feasibility committee to reconvene so that analysis of Measure A could be done and for a determination to be made whether another parcel tax measure is worthwhile. Board member Ben Allen said he supports putting a measure on the ballot, since Measure A received 64.25 percent support, close to the two-thirds support needed for passage.

“If we’d gotten 45 percent of the population voting ‘yes’ on this thing, we could kind of leave our tail hanging between our legs and just mope off into the sunset,” he said. “But we clearly have the strong support of a very strong majority of our community.”

If a measure were to go on the November general election ballot, it would need to be finalized by early August. If a tax were approved in November, money generated from it would not be available until the 2011-12 school year.

Allen and Board member Oscar de la Torre said the committee should get creative and look into alternative versions of a parcel tax measure, including one that is based on square footage rather than a flat amount for all property owners. Measure A opponents argued it was unfair that it would tax the same amount per property, regardless of size.

Last week, an Alameda Superior Court judge ruled that a 2008 voter-approved parcel tax that charged different amounts for commercial properties based on size in the Alameda Unified School District was legal. This was the first time a legal decision had been made on this kind of parcel tax. An attorney for one of the plaintiffs in two lawsuits against the District said he would appeal.

Allen, who is an attorney, said in an interview on Monday that he had heard about the decision, but had not yet read it. “I will be spending a good deal of time reviewing it,” he said. “It is certainly relevant.”