With less than one month to go, the Acalanes Union High School District (AUHSD) Board continues to determine key priorities for the map that will define the new By-Trustee election system. Instead of all voters in the district voting for all candidates, starting in 2026, five equal blocks of voters will elect only one trustee per area.
The change to a By-Trustee system is the result of a threatened lawsuit triggered by the California Voting Rights Act (CVRA), which prohibits the use of at-large elections when the “system impairs the ability of a protected class to elect candidates of its choice or its ability to influence the outcome of an election . . .”
The CVRA defines a protected class as a race, color or language minority group.
Despite the fact that it is mathematically impossible to create a voting area anywhere in the district that would give a protected class a majority of voters, the district’s lawyer Jonathan Salt (of F3, a law firm specializing in education law), and demographer David Lopez, are helping to design a map that follows the complicated rules while at least strengthening the voting clout of Asian and Latino residents in one or more of the areas.
Which means that creating the new Trustee Areas is a complicated process. The demographer must divide the district’s 2020 Census population of 119,039 into five areas with populations of 23,808 (plus or minus 10%). Each area must be contiguous, geographically compact, and must take into consideration “natural boundaries,” such as major highways and city limits. He must avoid severing “communities of interest,” and attempt to adhere to high school and feeder school boundaries.
Making it even more challenging, none of the district’s 1,100 census tracts can be broken up.
At the third public hearing (Sept. 3) – the first to offer map options – Lopez presented four choices.
Some maps took into consideration natural boundaries such as freeways and major surface streets. Some gave more weight to maintaining “communities of interest,” such as Rossmoor. And others tried to keep as many high school and feeder school boundaries intact as possible.
All the maps conformed to the CVRA requirements.
One quirk in the first four maps resulted from the combination of demographics, which vary widely from community to community, and the emphasis on enhancing the voting influence of protected minorities.
In general, Orinda has a smaller population of voting age minority citizens than other communities in the district, causing Lopez to place many Orinda voters in a trustee area that does not include Miramonte High School.
Some priorities emerged from the hearing. Trustees wanted more emphasis on aligning trustee area boundaries with feeder school boundaries. They also wanted changes to maps that grouped the Springhill elementary school area (in Lafayette) with the Buena Vista area (in Walnut Creek) in a single trustee area. Although geographically close, these communities differ significantly demographically and placing them together would diminish the influence of Latino and low-income voters.
As a result, Lopez created variations of the existing maps, and one new map that follows high school boundaries as much as possible. Among the three new maps, one finally puts the majority of Orinda in the same trustee area as Miramonte.
Continued concern over the possibility of creating trustee areas that will promote divisiveness is what led Board President Jennifer Chen to ask Salt to draft a resolution to bind all future trustees to faithfully represent the entire district.
No matter which voting map prevails, none of the high school attendance boundaries will change. All current AUHSD trustees will serve out their full terms. Their future eligibility to run for reelection will depend on the final map the board adopts, and where each trustee resides.
In all scenarios, Orinda would not vote for a new trustee until 2028.
The final public hearing and map adoption is Oct. 15. Maps under consideration are available on the district website (bit.ly/463NCHG), where the public can submit comments.
