Thanks to the thoroughly addled City Council agenda order, the most significant item was scheduled dead last at the April 8 meeting. At the last minute, it was continued to tonight’s meeting.

It’s still the most significant item, but it will be heard early in the evening.

It, of course, is the Council’s first take on the independent study of the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District’s special education program that it mandated last year.

The Council took the unusual step, after hearing several parents’ detailed and horrifying descriptions of all the ways in which they and their children were mistreated by District personnel and policies. It ordered that $520,000 of the City’s annual allocation be withheld until the District ordered the independent study, accepted it, complied with and implemented its findings.

The report was delivered a couple of weeks ago. It’s devastating, a catalogue of missteps, abuses, lapses and carelessness that confirms everything that parents had regularly reported to the School Board, and the Board had ignored.

Tonight, the Council will “review and discuss whether the…District has met the conditions placed by City Council on June 12, 2007…”

A “staff administrative item” on tonight’s agenda caught our attention for entirely different reasons,

As everyone must know by now, a residents’ group, Treesavers, hasblocked the City’s removal of 54 ficus trees from downtown streets for six months. Today is Earth Day. The Treesavers plan to march today, hold a rally on City Hall steps during the Council meeting and deliver a scroll to the Council (see story below).

But, out of arrogance, ignorance, orneriness or naiveté bordering on unconsciousness, the staff has chosen tonight to ask the Council to approve the expenditure of $395,000 for the removal and replacement of 300
“declining carob trees” and “specialized pruning” of another 330 carob trees.