Two weeks after designating $20,000 to hire a demographer to map out trustee boundary lines, Morgan Hill Unified School District’s board of education listened as the proposed new election areas were criticized for gerrymandering in favor of incumbents.
Trustees and district staff conducted an April 21 public hearing to see how things could be mapped out under an election system in which residents vote for a single candidate to represent their geographical area within the overall MHUSD boundaries.
Demographer Doug Johnson offered three different models for trustee boundary lines—each of them dividing the district into seven areas with one current board member in each. Those models can be viewed on the district website.
Before Johnson’s presentation, however, public speaker Julian Mancias, representing the Community Advocacy Coalition, the very group threatening the district with a lawsuit if changes to the election system are not made, criticized all three models.
“The maps that were presented appear flawed in the sense that they had the criteria of being designed to protect incumbencies,” Mancias said. “And the fact is there is no provision in the law for criteria for incumbency protection to be used.”
Mancias requested a formal meeting between Johnson and CAC members as well as the submission of three trustee boundary maps that the group designed on its own.
Johnson said he was willing to look at the CAC’s models and any other maps drawn out by other members of the public—and then bring those additional models to the board at the next public hearing. The demographer also explained that the California Voting Rights Act only mandates that a school district is obligated to draw the trustee boundary lines. The state law does not stipulate how those lines are drawn. Instead, a federal law, covering the same issue, outlines parameters for how to map out the districts.
Johnson told the board that 95 percent of the governing bodies which are exploring a change to by-district elections are doing so to avoid a lawsuit. So, when drawing the boundary areas, he tries “to accommodate the current trustees” into different zones.
An exception is Gavilan College’s board of trustees, which last week unanimously voted for a by-district election system without any threat of litigation.
“Once you move to trustee areas, you are in compliance with California Voting Rights Act,” said Johnson, explaining that each of the trustee areas must include the same number of total people, rather than the total registered voters.
Johnson continued that the trustee areas are not aligned with school attendance zones, either.
Trustee Gino Borgioli again expressed concern that shifting from the current at-large election system to a by-district format could force board members to be more loyal to their specific trustee area constituents rather than the district as a whole. In a by-district election, voters can only vote for candidates that seek to represent their specific trustee area. Currently, voters cast ballots for all trustees regardless of location.
“Legally, trustee areas matter on election day, candidate filing day, and that’s it,” Johnson answered. “The dynamics ideally of a board is: I got elected from there but I’m here for the best interests of the entire school district….That is a challenge for board members and the superintendent to wrestle with.”
A second public hearing on the trustee boundary areas has not yet been scheduled. The agenda for the May 12 school board meeting has not been finalized.
