By Niki Cervantes
Staff Writer

June 10, 2015 -- An outside organization trying to raise $4 million for everything from the arts and sciences to literacy coaches for the Santa Monica Malibu Unified School District has fallen short.

Just weeks before its June 30 deadline, the Santa Monica –Malibu Education Foundation (SMMEF) has raised  $2,302,966, said Ann Conkle, a spokesperson for the group.

 Despite the shortfall, no programs funded by SMMEF will be cut, she said.

Thanks to an increase in funding from Governor Jerry  Brown’s  revised budget for next year, the district has money to pick up some of the services provided by the Foundation.

The district’s superintendent, Sandra Lyon, is now recommending some of the services SMMEF funded instead be paid for through the district’s nearly $102.6 million budget for 2015-2016.

Those services include literacy coaches, secondary school staffing and some professional development programs. The proposed 2015-2016 Fiscal Year budget recommends allocating $2.5 million for those services.

From now on, donations to the Foundation will be used to support elementary arts, instructional assistants and discretionary grants at each school, Conkle said.

“This would mean that no programs originally intended to be funded by donations to SMMEF would be cut in the 2015-2016 school year,” she said.

Although its premier fundraiser, the Foundation’s Pier Party, garnered more than $125,000, SMMEF had trouble getting enough parents to donate.

Still, Conkle said the organization’s funds came from more than 2,640 donors, and that every PTA in the district contributed. 

In addition, more than 60 business and corporate leaders supported the foundation’s campaign this year through events and direct investments. They contributed gifts from $1,000 to $100,000, she said.

The SMMEF has traditionally stepped in to provide services that were otherwise jeopardized by cuts in state funding.

For instance, it provided 87 instructional assistants who worked in elementary classrooms and provided $750,000 in discretionary grants used for enrichment programs and staff, including those in the sciences, health clerks and counseling support.

Five additional full-time teachers were employed at middle schools and high schools through SMMEF funding. It also paid for 779 teachers and instructional assistants to receive comprehensive training and helped fund a variety of arts-related programs.