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The Mountain View Los Altos High School District is planning to switch its school board elections to be based on trustee areas, rather than continuing to use its current at-large system, in an attempt to avoid a potential lawsuit under the California Voting Rights Act.
The school board voted 5-0 at a Monday, Sept. 9, meeting to establish an area-based system for its elections after receiving a demand letter from an attorney on behalf of a district resident.
In the coming months, MVLA intends to work with a demographer to divide the school district into five sub-regions, so that the voters in each area can elect one trustee to the school board. The new map would take effect in time for the November 2026 election, and wouldn’t impact this November’s voting process.
MVLA currently uses an at-large system to elect trustees, where residents throughout the school district elect all five members of the board.
The district got a letter from Santa Barbara-based attorney Robert Goodman on behalf of district resident Gerardo Alvarez on Aug. 2, alleging that MVLA’s at-large system violates the California Voting Rights Act. An attached report argues that the current system “impairs the ability of members of protected classes to elect candidates of their choice and their ability to influence the outcomes of elections.”
The letter states that if the board doesn’t adopt a resolution within 45 days of receiving the letter commencing a switch to district-based elections, a “legal action” will be initiated against the district.
“District elections are sweeping California. No government jurisdiction in California of which this office is aware has successfully defended a complaint alleging a violation of the CVRA,” the letter states.
MVLA Superintendent Eric Volta similarly told the school board that many districts across the state have received such letters, and that he doesn’t know of any who fought and won. There are some districts who have stuck with at-large systems despite receiving a letter and haven’t been sued, Volta told the Voice, but he described those cases as the districts getting lucky.
MVLA board member Phil Faillace said at last week’s meeting that when the state legislature passed the California Voting Rights Act in the early 2000s, it made it “absolutely crystal clear” that it wanted a shift from at-large to district-based elections.
“If you read the act, you see it is ridiculously easy to prove that a district is in violation of it if it is using at-large elections,” Faillace said.
Locally, Santa Clara spent years in legal battles over switching to district elections, which cost the city $6 million, according to the San Jose Mercury News. The city now elects council members using districts.
The Foothill-De Anza Community College District switched to district-based elections in 2022 after receiving a similar letter several years earlier. Los Altos is currently in the midst of switching its City Council to district-based elections.
MVLA’s decision to switch to district-based elections will be cheaper than fighting it and potentially facing a lawsuit, Volta said.
The district still expects to have to reimburse Goodman for his legal services on behalf of Alvarez. But because MVLA agreed to switch to district-based elections, these expenses are capped at $37,970 under state law, according to Goodman’s letter. There would be no cap if the district hadn’t agreed and a lawsuit was filed, the letter said.
The district also signed a $7,500 contract with a demographer to assist with the switch to district-based elections, including creating three potential maps of the trustee areas. MVLA will also have to pay its own attorney for work on the matter, Volta said.
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This is, as Trustee Faillace said, ridiculously easy to understand what the Legislative Intent was for this voter-rights act. The dearly departed Joaquin Avila* after first working for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) figured out how to make our state’s local district elections less Majority Racial CONTROLLED. Yes, wealthy white people still have an over influence (the Legislatures, The Governors, and the Courts agree, > 20 years) in most city, county, school district elections. Power to the People, power to the People of Color(s) also. But, for years I was a RINO!
The High School district encloses high Hispanic areas (in SoCal “barrios”) and almost exclusively in-the-hills non-Hispanic areas. Even Asians in wealthy Los Altos will now soon get to concentrate their Own election resources to Asian council candidates who are running (more often) in much smaller ‘districts’.
This is a great move, I think, IMO, for representative democracy for all sorts of Council and School District governing bodies.
Ah – I like the other guy lawyer/ CVRA / more than this guy. But maybe he, ‘my favorite’, will get MVWSD in his sights! It’s not at all an “even money” bet that “Here comes the Judge!” if MVWSD trustees do not ‘wake up’ very quickly.
* J. Avila, MacAuthor Foundation Fellowship “Genius Grant” (1996) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joaquin_Avila_(lawyer)
Wikipedia seems to me, from my other studies, also a good general reference on the application of the CVRA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Voting_Rights_Act
I hope the moderator restores/reedits the PARAGRAPHs that I originally put into my comment above!
The demographer analysis in Los Altos found flaws with the shakedown letter sent to them. The letter claimed Los Altos should by rights have 2 Asian council members since it said the city had a 38% Asian population. This relies on a lot of assumptions, such as Asian’s being as likely to be citizens as other racial groups, and the idea that non Asian people wouldn’t vote for an Asian candidate (both are false).
But the city had 3 potential districts drawn up and they all have nearly the same 35% or so of Asian residents. The interesting thing is that in 4 of the 5 districts the fraction of Asians in the voting age population is much less than the overall population. I.e. apparently there are more Asian kids in Los Altos as a fraction of all kids than there are voting age adults as a fraction in that age cohort.
However, for some reason it turns out in each option for on particular geographic area the fraction of Asian adults is the same as the fraction fall ages. So there will be one district where around 35% of the voting age population are Asian and 4 districts where 23% or so of the voting age population would be classed as Asian.
So, big improvement. To the extent that race factors into electoral success, for 4 of the 5 seats on the Los Altos City council will have more difficulty electing Asians than the current city wide make up, by maybe 20% or so of that factor, 20% harder if you believe race matters. And then for one single district there will be 35% MORE voters who area Asian than the current situation or perhaps 50% more than in each of the other 4 districts.
Ah @Long, I think you should read the Legislative Intent of the CVRA. It is not just VOTER% but it is also ‘influence the outcome of an election.’ * & ** (specifically on school districts) Asians in Los Altos who are legal residents but not Citizen Voters: they can volunteer time to their favorite candidate [race, class notwithstanding]. These South, or East Asians can contribute $,$$$ to their favored candidates! Their ‘favored candidates’ do not have to be running in their own District! But we all knew That!
Now, go figure. Might those good Asian-Citizen Candidates (for LA Council) have a much better chance of getting elected to Council when this starts to ‘kick in’?
‘Course! (see the California Supreme Ct. decision in **)
And, although I think South-East Asians are much less election influence up here (in No. County) than in East San Jose (“Little Saigon”) they too can decide for themselves if Candidates in much more competitive, small election races are worth their while in supporting (Vote, $$, volunteer).
Not so much in Los Altos: Hispanic Voters /residents/ supporters also have an equally enhanced ‘push’ when they too can use the Small Districts / Small Campaign advantages of CVRA to their own perceived advantage.
We, as California citizens supporting the CVRA along with the majority of our legislators and recent past governors and jurists, hope you understand / majority rule at the State level.
* Sunnyvale 11/20/2018 Report to council, At-Large to District-Based. https://sunnyvaleca.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=3756725&GUID=053BCA6F-5BB8-4309-8868-4CBCDD038475&FullText=1
** https://publications.csba.org/california-school-news/october-2023/court-rules-in-favor-of-neighborhood-association-in-california-voting-rights-act-case/
I have no expertise on the California Voting Rights Acts, but I find it strange that moving from at-large to districts is considered *better* for representation of sub-populations, whether those sub-populations are defined by race, religion, socio-economic status, etc. I grew in Georgia, and southern states have made an art of form of using districting to reduce, not enhance, the voting power of sub-populations. Wouldn’t CVRA have served that purpose better by pushing toward some form of proportional representation, rather than relying on the assumed (and sadly, accurate) assumption that geographic sorting makes a district-based system better than at-large?
The problem is that Los Altos is not a charter city, or it could legally switch to proportional voting, or ranked choice voting. But problem with CVRA is that it holds the city hostage since the fee to the letter writer is capped at $37,500 if it just caves.
But all the districts Los Altos’ demographer have drawn have roughly the same proportion of Asian voters, except at best in one of the five cases. In those cases the Asian Population reaches 38% in just that one district.
The writer of the Bogus letter claimed the city as a whole had 38% Asia residents which was just completely incorrect. Also city wide and in every district the voting age population (Which CVRA case law says is what counts, not my observation) is substantially less than 38% in the city as a whole and in every proposed district, except for ONE in several of the proposed 5-way chop-ups. So to me, it’s an exercise in doing nothing real as far as CVRA goes.
However it does mean that there are only around 3000 voters to elect each council member, because it’s such a small city.
For MVLA there number of voters per trustee would be more than that, so that’s better.