By Jorge Casuso

December 11, 2023 -- Hearings to divide the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District into trustee areas will resume next month after efforts by the District and City to delay the process have failed.

On Monday, the LA County Committee on School District Organization informed attorneys opposing and supporting the plan submitted in January 2022 that public meetings will be held on January 31 and February 10.

The announcement comes almost one year after a lawsuit filed by the District and the City of Santa Monica was dismissed in January ("City, SMMUSD Sue County Committee to Stop School Districting Plan," March 21, 2022).

"(It) has been nearly a year since the Superior Court instructed the the parties to move forward with the hearings," the Committee's attorney wrote.

"The Committee is also mindful that deadlines for the November 2024 SMMUSD elections are approaching and that its decision on the SMMUSD (trustee area voting) petition may impact those elections," the letter said.

The first two meetings will be held Wednesday, January 31 at 6 p.m. and Saturday, February 10 at 9:30 a.m. at locations in Malibu and Santa Monica that will be determined "in the next several days," the letter said.

The hearings "will consider only the map provided" in the SMMUSD petition and "its conformity with statutory requirements."

The Committee had initially contemplated that the first hearings "would focus on evidence of racially polarized voting, vote dilution, and furthering the purposes of the California Voting Rights Act."

But the Committee said it decided to reverse the order after the passage of Assembly Bill 764, which expands 2019's FAIR MAPS Act (FMA) to include additional local governments, such as school boards.

AB 764 also "strengthens the FMA’s redistricting criteria, public engagement requirements and transparency measures," according to California Common Cause.

The lawsuit filed by the School District and City in March 2022 challenged the constitutionality of SB 442, a State law that went into effect at the start of that year allowing the County Committee to create districts without voter approval.

The lawsuit delayed the Committee's review of the petition signed by more than 500 qualified Santa Monica and Malibu voters to replace at-large elections with seven districts, possibly in time for the November 2022 election.

Proponents of the plan argue that the School Board has long had a disproportionate number of members from the wealthy north side of Santa Monica.