School District Focuses on Goals

The Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District is close to completing the 18-month process to update its Strategic Plan from 2002. The draft document of the updated plan includes an overall mission statement and a detailed pyramid of goals and objectives for the next five years. 

Malibu parent Craig Foster praised the draft document during an information meeting Thursday at . 

“This is beyond progressive,” he said. “It’s cutting edge in educational philosophy—not just the three Rs and test scores. This is a fairly revolutionary document for a public school.”

Foster was referring to the plan’s goals for students to graduate as well-rounded people who don’t just have book learning, but also know how to collaborate, communicate, think critically, be creative, use good judgment, analyze and evaluate ideas and exercise the “rights and responsibilities of citizenship.”

SMMUSD Superintendent Tim Cuneo said to develop the plan, which is expected to go before the Board of Education for a vote in June, district officials interviewed people in the community and looked at all aspects of schooling. This included non-academic features such as food service. A strategic planning team was formed to review the latest research on schooling so it could be determined what should be included in the SMMUSD’s plan.

“We have surveyed every single employee in the district, even the bus drivers,” said Peggy Harris, the district’s director of curriculum instruction. 

The district even brought back former students and interviewed them about what the SMMUSD could have done better to prepare them for college. Through this process, officials learned a key area for improvement was writing skills.

“The interest is to look at the whole child and how that child develops within the system,” Cuneo said.

A supporting goal is for the district to maintain fiscal solvency despite decreased funding from the state, its largest financial contributor. This includes looking at new funding methods such as leasing out school facilities and land and developing relationships with the entertainment industry. Cuneo said he was proud of working with the city of Santa Monica to obtain a half-cent sales tax increase that could give the district an additional $5.5 to $6 million annually beginning in June. 

“It’s the first time it’s ever been done in California—developing this kind of partnership with a city,” Cuneo said.

Other goals include giving as many professional development opportunities to teachers and staff as possible, forming relationships with local companies that can provide internships and mentoring opportunities to students and experimenting with new classroom technologies such as distance learning and on-demand classroom videos.