Malibu Education Foundation delivers $820,000 to school board Play

The Malibu Education Foundation gave an $820,000 check to the Santa Monica-Malibu school board last week.

The almost $832,000 raised in Malibu is about one-third of the amount raised by the much-larger Santa Monica Education Foundation.

Karin Al Hardin leads the Malibu Education Foundation, and she told the school board last week that local fundraising is about to shift into high gear.

"We are entering into year three of operations, so we are still a very new organization," Al Hardin said. "This is the year we intend to start raising forward, and we are continuing to fund the essentials that we started out funding."

"But there were two things I wanted to just call out that are exciting: we just received two grants over the last few months — from the Greater LA Education Foundation and from L.A. County — which will be applied towards academic recovery in middle and high school. That's because our students are still making up that month of school that they missed, a couple years ago, because of the fires."

Al Hardin told the school board that the major fundraisers of the year are coming up.

The annual gala fundraiser is now set for October 17. The Malibu Moves marathon, which benefits the Malibu Education Foundation, is in late October. And the annual Christmas tree sales lot at the Malibu Civic Center returns.

For the second year, the Christmas tree lot is being organized by a Malibu student. This year, Parker Kaplan from Malibu High is the manager.

There has been nothing but good financial news.

As to the divorce between Santa Monica and Malibu, behind-the-scenes negotiations continue between the two cities. Santa Monica is supporting the split, and that support is critical to get a piece of special Malibu independence legislation approved in the California legislature.

There has been an awful lot of silence coming from Sacramento about critical legislation that is needed to split Malibu out of the Santa Monica school district.

There has never been a school district split of a wealthy school district that generates large tax revenues, so a special bill is necessary.

Meanwhile, a Malibu real estate firm is estimating that breaking Malibu out of the Santa Monica school district could increase Malibu home prices by 6 percent to 8 percent.

Shen Schulz, a high-end real estate firm, has released a report on just what the district divorce means to home values. They say that not all of Malibu would see increased home values — not at the beaches, but in neighborhoods attractive to families like Point Dume, Malibu Park, Malibu West and Big Rock.

There has been nothing but good news for the local school district this year, budget-wise. An influx of money from the state has forced the district to redo its budget. The Santa Monica-Malibu district has received $11.25 million in unanticipated dollars from Sacramento this summer, in the new state of California budget.