The Gavilan Joint Community College District Board of Trustees has returned from the drawing board with a plan to redraw the electoral grid.
The board this month officially approved policy changes that call for tighter parameters for elections in and after November 2016, and present a tentative expansion of the community college district’s three sub-districts to seven, allowing residents of each area to elect their own trustee.
Board President Walt Glines confirmed in a statement Monday to BenitoLink that district officials April 14 passed a proposal for “trustee areas,” designating enough of them for the entire board.
“We anticipate there will be seven districts with trustees representing specific geographical areas,” said Glines. “Each area will have approximately the same number of residents and be similar in racial/ethnic populations.”
At the moment, according to the board’s policy, the Gavilan Joint Community College District includes the Morgan Hill Unified High School District, Gilroy Unified High School District and San Benito Joint Unified High School District. The community college district additionally includes Anzar High School, according to Glines. Currently, the policy allows all of the district’s voters to participate in bi-annual elections of trustees, serving four-year terms.
In the event “the change in election methodology and the establishment of several trustee areas receives the approval of the Board of Governors of the California Community Colleges,” according to the board’s agenda, “any affected incumbent trustee shall serve out his or her term of office.”
In recent months, school districts have pleaded to the state for permission to adopt “by-trustee-area election methods,” seeking to reduce exposure to lawsuits over the broadness of their electoral areas.
“Many districts in California are facing existing or potential litigation under the California Voting Rights Act over their at-large election methods,” said the State Board of Education in an agenda packet in January. “To help avoid potential litigation, the districts are taking action to establish trustee areas and adopt by-trustee-area election methods.”
During the local trustees’ meeting April 14, according to a draft of minutes provided by Glines, Gavilan College President Steven Kinsella said that the proposal aimed to move the district-wide method of voting from “at large” to “by district” elections.
“Trustees would be elected by their ‘population center,'” noted the drafted minutes. “This may change the current board representation of three from San Benito County, two from Gilroy and two from Morgan Hill. Trustees are currently elected by the population residing in Gavilan’s entire district. This change is in response to the California Voting Rights Act.”
California Gov. Jerry Brown last year vetoed a bill that sought to expand the California Voting Rights Act to support both changes to at-large methods and lawsuits by minority groups, and ban district-based voting that impairs their electoral power.
“While there is progress to be made, the federal Voting Rights Act and the California Voting Rights Act already provide important safeguards to ensure that the voting strength of minority communities is not diluted,” said a statement by the governor’s office.
In 2013, the United States Supreme Court struck down a couple of pieces of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, whose fourth and fifth sections had required only some of the states — including several in the South — to receive the federal government’s blessing before the enactment of any law tied to voting.
“If Congress had started from scratch in 2006, it plainly could not have enacted the present coverage formula,” said the nation’s highest court, according to its opinion delivered by Chief Justice John Roberts, in Shelby County v. Holder. “It would have been irrational for Congress to distinguish between States in such a fundamental way based on 40-year-old data, when today’s statistics tell an entirely different story. And it would have been irrational to base coverage on the use of voting tests 40 years ago, when such tests have been illegal since that time. But that is exactly what Congress has done.”
This story received an update at 6:33 p.m. April 28 to further specify schools within the Gavilan Joint Community College District.