The Los Alamitos Unified School District Board has adopted a final plan to divide the district into five trustee voting areas as part of its move away from the current at-large electoral system. The Board decided unanimously to recommend the Green 4 trustee areas map to the Orange County Committee on School District Organization, which, along with the State Board of Education, must approve the plan before it goes into effect for the November 2020 election.
The school board is moving to a trustee-area voting system because the California Voting Rights Act strongly discourages the current at-large system. Dividing the school district into trustee areas helps ensure that minority group voting rights in the community are protected and not abridged or diluted.
The Green 4 map was chosen by the Board after a five-month process that included 11 draft maps prepared by professional demographers and 35 public meetings to solicit community input on the decision.
The map includes a majority non-white trustee area (Area 1) and divides Leisure World between four areas. The map spreads district schools across the voting areas: Rossmoor and Hopkinson Elementary are in Area 3; Lee, Weaver and Oak Middle School are in Area 2; Los Alamitos Elementary, Los Alamitos High and McAuliffe Middle School are in Area 1; and McGaugh Elementary is in Area 5.
Board member Marlys Davidson resides in Area 1; David Boyer and Diana Hill reside in Area 3; Board President Meg Cutuli and Karen Russell reside in Area 5; and no members live in areas 2 or 4.
Final approval of the trustee voting area map and election cycles by the county and state is expected by May. As proposed to county and state officials, voting areas 2, 4 and 5 would hold school board elections in November 2020, and areas 1 and 3 would vote in 2022.
“My fellow Board members and I want to express our gratitude to the community,” said Board President Cutuli,” for the valuable input throughout the process that was influential in how we made our final decision.”
Complete information about the process of moving to the new electoral system can be found at the District website https://www.losal.org/voting.
