by Mark McDermott
The MBX Foundation over the course of the last two decades has somewhat quietly become an indispensable partner for the Manhattan Beach Unified School District.
MBX operates the district’s summer school and afterschool programs, manages third-party use of MBUSD facilities, handles the finances for over 50 booster clubs, and has contributed $5 million dollars towards major athletic facility upgrades and music, arts and other academic program grants.
Though the organization receives less fanfare than the more high-profile Manhattan Beach Education Foundation, which has itself become a critical bulwark in protecting classrooms from the potential devastating impacts of chronic underfunding from the state, MBX’s mission to provide help “beyond the classroom” has been hugely impactful.
“MBX is kind of an unsung hero,” said Jennifer Cochran, a former MBUSD school board member who now serves on the MBX Foundation board. “It’s because of the way MBX makes its revenue, which is all through services, as opposed to fundraising. All our revenue goes right back to the district in the form of enhancing facilities. And all our revenue has come from picking up and doing things that were essential to the community and to the district that the district couldn’t handle.”
It is a foundation unlike any other, handmade by necessity, specific to the needs of MBUSD as they arise. Now MBX is looking for a new leader. The organization is seeking applicants to serve as its executive director. The MBX board hopes to find someone not only possessing some nonprofit experience, but also, ideally, some local institutional knowledge.
They’ve not posted the job opening on national employment sites thus far because the specific set of qualities ideal for the position is more likely to be possessed by someone already in the community.
“The ideal candidate is somebody who has benefited and understands a community organization like this,” Cochran said. “And probably understands our school district.”
The uniqueness of the organization is also part of the opportunity for its next leader. MBX will grow according to MBUSD needs its leadership’s vision.
“MBX has always been creative in figuring out what ways it can help the district,” Cochran said. “And so the next chapter is — who can come up with what is next, and what is needed?”
MBX was founded in 2003 by Gary Wayland, a local CPA and MBUSD’s patron saint of practicality. He had previously served as the Manhattan Beach Education Foundation’s treasurer but saw district needs that MBEF could not address.
The organization was originally called the Manhattan Beach Athletic Foundation but changed its name in 2012 and adopted the tagline “Beyond the Classroom” to better reflect the broad scope of endeavors, including summer school and afterschool programs, and its partnership with all MBUSD booster clubs, which include sports, performing arts, and extracurricular programs.
“Gary Wayland had the foresight to say, ‘Hey, we can do this. We can make this happen,’” Cochran said. “He’s still involved, but he never likes to be mentioned. He never likes to take the credit. But he’s a superstar.”
The foundation’s very first grant project was the installation of a rubberized all-weather track at Waller Stadium, which used a $100,000 state grant and $500,000 raised by MBX. MBX has since donated $2 million to the West Field project, which renovated and turfed fields on the west edge of Mira Costa High, providing additional facilities for student athletes, the marching band, and community use; $1.1 million to install synthetic turf at Waller Stadium and upgrade the all-weather track; $350,000 for the construction of a storage building to augment the new athletic center finished in 2020 at the site of Fisher Gym, and over $750,000 in academic grants and scholarships.
Yet the numbers, impressive as they are, somehow understate the ongoing impact of MBX on so much of what occurs on MBUSD campuses. As Cochran noted, many elementary school parents remain relatively unaware how MBX benefits their children.
“A lot of the younger people in the district, if you don’t have kids who have made it to high school yet, often don’t know the impact of MBX,” Cochran said. “I mean, MBX runs all the afterschool programs, but parents — they see that as nice, you sign your kids up to take an afterschool class in elementary school, they stay for an extra hour-and-a-half and learn chess or golf or something else. I don’t think people see the service in that, in terms of how it gives back. Because it’s not until you get to high school where you realize that you couldn’t have all these sports teams, the kids couldn’t travel, and they couldn’t do all these things if you didn’t have booster clubs to support them.”
The summer school program is an example of MBX’s malleability. This summer was the foundation’s 22nd operating the program, and the first time that it went fully online, with 645 students participating. The number of students who want to attend summer school on campus has dropped precipitously since COVID. The trend nationally has gone to flexible, online, asynchronous courses as students attempt to fit in electives and required courses over the summer, freeing up time in their schedules during the school year.
“The teachers do not love the fact that kids are getting a whole semester of, say, geometry done, presumably working through it in four weeks on their own schedule,” Cochran said. “But college students do it all the time. I don’t think it’s anybody’s preferred method, except the students, but it’s just the way of the world. And it has freed us up a lot. It used to be that all the athletic tryouts that were happening during summer school had to happen between 2 and 6 p.m. because it was after school got out. Now, the kids are really flexible, so you can take advantage of cooler mornings and have more practices spread out throughout the day.”
The program likewise began as a means to meet district and students’ needs. State funding no longer covered summer school, and MBUSD could no longer even afford its previous bare-bones summer school, which was largely geared to students making up for failed marks. Meanwhile, other school districts, usually with the help of their Ed Foundations, were offering expanded summer school offerings. MBEF was not set up to take on that role, so MBX stepped in.
“And so MBX said, ‘Look, we can fill that gap for our students, so they don’t have to go elsewhere to take it. We’ll offer summer at Mira Costa,’” Cochran said. “And so MBX got accredited as a WASC accredited summer school program, and then it just expanded from there…Then it became one of our major revenue sources. But really, the biggest reason was to take the burden off of kids having to find the class somewhere else, and being able to take it at Costa, where we were able to hire our own teachers if they wanted to teach in the summer. Since then, MBX has just had to adapt, to keep up with the trends in education.”
Similarly, MBX stepped in to do what nobody else could do in serving as an umbrella for all MBUSD booster clubs.
“The School Connected Organizations, or SEOs, which are all the booster clubs at the high school and middle school, are essential,” Cochran said. “MBX makes no revenue from managing the booster clubs and holding all the money for individual booster clubs. A lot of our revenue goes into the services that make that possible, so that the district can have all these booster clubs for their activities. And again, that was purely a function of the school district could not do it. You have to have a legal way to raise funds for all of the extracurricular curricular activities, and the school district can’t manage that because they can’t collect money from parents to pay for sports, for uniforms and all of the expenses associated with all of these activities. So then all the money would have to come from the school district, which it doesn’t have….So that was another thing that MBX jumped in and did, just because someone had to do it.”
The list goes on and on. Managing district facilities for community use is the other big piece of the puzzle. This both more fully utilizes the facilities themselves, and provides essential revenue for their upkeep and improvements. And, of course, it gives the community access to great fields and gyms.
“So without MDX, the community also doesn’t get to use all these facilities,” Cochran said.
It is a somewhat tangled tale, how MBX serves as glue connecting so many aspects of MBUSD. The next MBX executive director will be tasked with not only keeping this many vital services running, but likely even further expanding what MBX does. And being able to convey the MBX story to the community — what MBEF executive director Hilary Mahan is so masterfully adept at for her organization — would likewise help the foundation keep evolving.
MBX board president Bill Fournell, another former MBUSD board trustee, expressed optimism that the exact leader will emerge to take the foundation to its next level.
“Since its start in 2003, I’ve watched MBX grow into a true partner for our schools — supporting students, families, and the community while improving programs and facilities across the district,” Fournell said. “I’m excited for this next chapter and the chance for a new executive director to continue that legacy and make a lasting impact.”
See MBXFoundation.org for more information, or to apply for the executive director position, email resume and cover letter to mbx.edsearch@gmail.com. ER
