Louise Jaffe

Louise Jaffe, Chair

Louise Jaffe who was elected to the Santa Monica College Board of Trustees in November 2006, has lived in Santa Monica for more than 20 years.

She first became involved in community and education issues through her daughters, Maggie and Nora, who have been educated in Santa Monica’s public schools.

Ms. Jaffe has been a PTA leader since the early 1990s, serving terms as PTA President for Will Rogers Elementary School, Santa Monica High School, and the Santa Monica-Malibu Council of PTAs. She has been honored with five PTA Honorary Service Awards and is the proud recipient of PTA’s highest award, the Golden Oak.

Ms. Jaffe founded the Santa Monica Lifelong Learning Community Project to create a shared community vision to realize Santa Monica’s potential as a model Lifelong Learning Community. She continues to write a monthly Lifelong Learning Community eNewsletter posted at www.smllc.org.

She is also a founding member of the political action committee Community for Excellent Public Schools (CEPS) www.excellentpublicschools.org and served as Co-Chair from 2003 to May 2006 when she stepped down to run for the College Board. During her tenure as co-chair, CEPS gathered 15,000 signatures from Santa Monica voters to qualify a charter amendment that would require the City to increase its funding to our public schools. Just prior to the petition deadline, the City and the School District came to a contractual agreement which has greatly improved funding stability, predictability, and quality for our public preK-12 schools.

Ms. Jaffe has a bachelor’s degree in biology from Antioch College and has taken classes at UCLA Extension (where she’s also taught), SMC, West Los Angeles College, and California State University at Northridge. Prior to marrying and raising a family in Santa Monica, she traveled extensively. She works in film, television, and education.

e-mail to: jaffe_louise@smc.edu