A strategic planning committee is looking at the future of the Hermosa Beach City School District from every angle, even studying the possibility of merging with a neighboring school district.
Committee members have met with the superintendents of the other two beach cities school districts to gather information on the possibility of a merger, although they stressed the preliminary nature of the study.
“Everything is on the table,” said committee member J.R. Reviczky, a former Hermosa councilman.
The committee, including current and former School Board members, parents, community members and the district superintendent, is scheduled to make an interim report to the School Board Jan. 12.
Committee members have been hard at work collecting information, and stressed that they have not begun forming recommendations that in time they will make to the School Board.
The board appointed the committee to “assess the long-term sustainability of the school district and prepare a business plan” for the future, according to a district report. State budget cuts have cramped the 1,200-student, K-8 district, and for years volunteer fundraising and community donations have covered about 10 percent of the schools’ operating costs.
The full planning committee has held three public meetings that went largely unattended except for the committee members themselves.
Regarding the short term, they have been preparing as best they can for an early January budget proposal by the governor, who has spoken of broad cuts. For the longer term, they have been studying some revenue-raising possibilities that have been tried before, such as a bond measure or a parcel tax, both of which failed in Hermosa this decade.
But new to this level of study is the merger idea.
Members of a subcommittee have been looking into the legal “lapsation” process of dissolving the two-campus school district, and they have met with the superintendents of the Redondo Beach and Manhattan Beach unified school districts to try to gather information on how a possible merger with either district would work.
George Schmeltzer, a former Hermosa councilman and a member of the subcommittee, stressed the preliminary nature of the talks.
A bigger school district would provide “economies of scale,” and unified school districts, which have high schools, receive more state money per student for average daily attendance, Schmeltzer said.
“Would it be worth it, that’s largely a big unknown,” he said.
“And of course, in the end, the public would have to want it,” he said. “If the public says no, we wouldn’t want to go in that direction.” ER
