Sonoma school district selects new voting boundary map for trustee elections

School district officials voted unanimously on Jan. 21 for a new voting boundary map for district trustees – one that is compliant with state law, does not change school attendance areas, and could make it easier for residents to run for an open trustee seat.

“The entry to get in is easier,” said Bruce Abbott, associate superintendent of Sonoma Valley Unified School District, about the opportunity for someone interested in becoming a school board trustee.

The voting method currently used to elect school board trustees is a hybrid between a district election and an at-large election in which voters throughout the district vote for all five trustees, while candidates are required to each live within the attendance area of one of the district’s five elementary schools. Yet trustees do not represent just their attendance area, they represent the entire district in an at-large format.

At-large voting models are increasingly being found in violation of the state Voting Rights Act, or AB 182, a 2001 state law that prohibits at-large elections if they’re found to create a barrier to minority candidates. School districts and municipalities throughout California are in the same boat and undergoing similar revisions.

In the school district’s new voting model, the redrawn districts – now called trustee areas – are divided into five areas unrelated to school attendance areas, each with populations between 7,573 to 8,212.

“(Candidates) will have to knock on fewer doors,” Abbott said.

Trustees on Tuesday were presented with five options of new trustee area boundaries – each created overlap between some current trustees, based on their residences. In the area map that was eventually chosen by the board, both trustees Cathy Coleman and Catalina Wetzel live within what’s called Trustee Area 1. Coleman’s term expires in 2022, and Wetzel’s expires in 2020. Under the guidelines of the new trustee area resolution, Coleman will retain the Area 1 seat when Wetzel’s term ends at the end of 2020; Wetzel will next be eligible to run in 2022, assuming she maintains her residence in that trustee area boundary.

Wetzel was only recently named to her trustee seat; she was appointed by the board to fulfill the remainder of Nicole Abate Ducarroz’s term when Ducarroz stepped down last fall.

Trustee Area 4, the southwest segment of the district, will have an open trustee seat in the November election. Melanie Blake will represent Trustee Area 2 and will retain her seat until 2022; John Kelly and Britta Johnson, whose terms end in 2020, will represent Trustee Areas 3 and 5 respectively, and will need to run for re-election in November should they seek to maintain their seats.

The new boundary map still needs approval from the Sonoma County Committee on School District Organization, which will hold a public hearing on Monday, Jan. 27. If approved, the district can submit an application for a waiver from the state Board of Education to seek its approval without having to put the matter on the ballot.

To ensure compliance with the Voting Rights Act, the district hired Scott Torlucci of Davis Demographics to divide the district into five trustee areas so that each area mirrors the proportions of the demographics of the district as a whole.

The Voting Rights Act is designed to ensure that minorities are represented fairly in local elections to “assure that protected class member rights are not abridged or deluded,” said Carl Corbin, Sonoma Valley Unified School District attorney.

That means that in order to have equal representation in each area, the demographer had to avoid what is called “packing” or “cracking,” Corbin said.

“Cracking, meaning that you break them into really small groups so the minority groups don’t have any particular sway,” he said. Or packing when you “take all the minority groups, put (them) in one area so they get potentially a representative, but then they lose out in all the other areas.”

The trustee areas were based on the 2010 census, and can be reviewed and adjusted when the results of the 2020 census are released, Corbin said, which will probably be sometime in 2021.

“The board will need to look at probably making a change in 2022,” he said.

In Tuesday’s meeting trustees discussed the merits of four other mapping options, before narrowing it to two – scenarios B and D – taking into consideration comments by the public who favored option B.

Fred Allebach, Mario Castillo and Dave Ransom – members of the Sonoma Valley Housing Group – sent a letter to the school board in advance of the meeting and each spoke during the meeting asking trustees to select scenario B saying that it “is the best able to enfranchise our working-class, Latino residents, thus meeting the spirit of the law.”

Contact Anne at anne.ernst@sonomanews.com.