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The Los Altos School District Board of Trustees has joined a growing number of local elected bodies that are shifting from at-large to by-district elections in an effort to avoid potential lawsuits under the California Voting Rights Act.
The Los Altos School District’s board voted 5-0 at an Aug. 17 meeting to initiate the transition to area-based elections after receiving a letter alleging the district’s current system violates residents’ voting rights.
“As a result of the great diversity in the Los Altos School District, the desirability of district elections will only grow in the coming years,” the letter said. “Hundreds of government agencies in California have established district elections in recent years.”
The allegations appear to come from a former Bullis Charter School board member. Santa Barbara-based attorney Robert Goodman sent the letter on behalf of Los Altos resident Thomas Yih. Bullis Charter School, which is located in Los Altos, previously had a board member of the same name. Yih did not respond to a request for comment.
Asked for comment, Bullis Executive Director Maureen Israel told the Voice that the planned shift in the school district’s board elections “seems to be unrelated to Bullis” and that the charter school did not have a position on the issue.
“Our families and former board members may participate in civic activities in their individual capacities, but BCS does not track these and they do not reflect anything about BCS,” Israel wrote in an email.
Bullis Charter School and the Los Altos School District have long had a tumultuous relationship. Most recently, the district and charter school have been at odds over the district’s plans to move Bullis to a new campus that is under construction in the San Antonio area.
Move follows broader shift to area-based elections
Under the current at-large system, voters from across the school district get to vote for all five trustees. Under an area-based system, the district would be divided into five sub-regions, with voters in each area electing one trustee to the school board.
The Los Altos School District is just the latest in a string of local governmental entities shifting away from at-large elections. The Mountain View Los Altos High School District will hold its first area-based elections this November. The same is true of the Los Altos City Council. The Foothill-De Anza Community College District made the shift in 2022.
Each entity made the change after facing the threat of a California Voting Rights Act lawsuit. When the Los Altos School District voted to switch to area-based elections last month, its resolution noted that no local agency has successfully defended against a challenge under the California Voting Rights Act.
The state law bans the use of at-large elections “where their use impairs the ability of a protected class to elect candidates of its choice, or its ability to influence the outcome of elections,” the resolution said.
Now that the decision has been made, the Los Altos School District plans to hold public hearings in January and work with a demographer to create maps of potential trustee areas in February and March, Assistant Superintendent Erik Walukiewicz said.
“The demographer will have to come out, and they’ll study our boundaries, our district boundaries, and then they will draw our district boundaries into five different districts that are somewhat equal in size,” he told the Voice.
The district plans to adopt the trustee area map in April, so there would be no effect on the upcoming November election.
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Once LASD moves to district election, the City of Mountain View will be the only at-large election left for many Mountain View residents.
Why not ranked-choice voting with proportional allocation?
https://fairvote.org/archives/multi_winner_rcv_example/