Supporters and critics of district based voting, along with heaps of public commenters, gave the Los Angeles County Office of Education Committee on School District Organization plenty to digest last week.
Held on the Malibu campus of Santa Monica College on Jan. 31, the committee held a public hearing to receive input on the legality of the voting map submitted as part of a petition aiming to establish district based voting in Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District (SMMUSD) elections. The petition, initially submitted in 2022 by Malibu attorney Kevin Shenkman on behalf of Malibu residents, claims that the district’s at-large voting system is unfair to minority voters, and proposes a division of the district into seven geographic "trustee areas."
Presentations focused on the impacts of Assembly Bill 764 that went into effect in January. The bill requires any map approved by the committee comply with several criteria, including that trustee areas must be geographically contiguous to the "maximum extent practicable."
An initial map by the petitioners would make non-contiguous districts merging parts of Malibu and Santa Monica, one combining the eastern half of Malibu with Santa Monica’s Sunset Park neighborhood, and the other fusing the western half of Malibu with Santa Monica’s NOMA and Wilmont neighborhoods.
In his presentation, Shenkman argued that the word "practicable" in trustee area creation is defined as what is "advisable," rather than what is "possible." Demographer David Ely further argued that while it’s "possible" for SMMUSD to draw a legal seven trustee area map with one area encompassing all of Malibu, it would not be "advisable" because representation would not be accurately split between the communities.
The petitioners also provided two alternative maps to the committee, previously unseen in prior discussions. One would take the same eastern half of Malibu and combine it with a hypothetical district covering Santa Monica’s Pico neighborhood, while the western half would merge with the Ocean Park area of the city. Another alternative would have about 90% of Malibu within its own district, with an eastern sliver of the city combined with the Pico neighborhood trustee area. Ely said the Pico neighborhood was a focus in alternative map creation because of its "unique needs" and feedback from local residents in that neighborhood.
In opposition to the petitioners’ usage of the word "practicable," attorney representing SMMUSD Frederic D. Woocher noted that the committee’s own lawyers have previously advised that the word is more in line with the word "possible" than "advisable," and that the map also violates the new Election Code subsection by going against the mandate that trustee areas must preserve the "geographic integrity of neighborhoods and communities of interest."
On the notion that one trustee area entirely housed in Malibu would cause "substantial" over representation, Woocher said that a hypothetical split of trustee areas that give one to Malibu would still satisfy population requirements. The United States Constitution requires that election districts "shall be substantially equal in population," but the courts allow for a 10% difference between the most populous and least populous district. In a hypothetical splitting of the SMMUSD population (110,031 people), the population comprising Malibu and surrounding unincorporated areas equals 16,740, which would exceed the ideal seven-way split by 1,021 persons, or 6.49%, still within the 10% threshold.
SMMUSD Board of Education members echoed Woocher’s claim that two trustee areas with a majority Malibu population would fall under gerrymandering, including Maria Leon-Vasquez, who felt that the map deliberately targeted her Sunset Park neighborhood and would be "diluting racial diversity" on the board.
"The purported reason, really, for this map … [is] to create two districts for Malibu to remedy Malibu’s supposed historical lack of representation on our school board," Leon-Vasquez said. "This assertion is not accurate and worse, it equates being a citizen of Malibu with being a member of a protected class under the [California Voting Rights Act]. As a member of [a] protected class myself, I personally find this very insulting."
SMMUSD Board of Education Vice-President Jon Kean also said the lack of representation premise was "false," and that with a "few exceptions," Malibu has had elected representation in proportion to its population. Former board member Craig Foster pushed back on that claim earlier in the hearing, stating that there was no Malibu member of the board from 2008 to 2014, when he "had to raise and spend more than twice the nearest competitor" to win a seat that year.
Kean also addressed the "elephant in the room," that being Malibu’s desire for local control over its schools which can be done via unification, the legal term for splitting Malibu into its own district. Although the trustee area voting petition and unification efforts are separate actions, proponents of splitting Malibu and Santa Monica into its own districts said that the trustee area issue would be moot if Malibu established its own district.
"Had it not been for this hearing … we would be sharing the results of years of collaborative work by the unification subcommittees of the City of Malibu and SMMUSD, a long-sought after solution was ready to be presented to residents of both communities … this open and collective process is now delayed for at least one legislative year by these hearings over maps that … do absolutely nothing to help the Malibu community in their desire for local control," Kean said.
After both petitioners and SMMUSD representatives presented, the committee heard public comment that was mostly taken up by Malibu residents wishing for increased representation on district matters. One of the proponents of trustee area voting was SMMUSD Board of Education member Stacy Rouse, a Malibu resident who desired to see both Santa Monica and Malibu "well served" by the switch, believing that trustee area voting made for better communication and representation.
Other commenters pointed to Malibu’s voice being "stifled" by the "disproportionate impact" of the Santa Monica political scene, that trustee area voting "lower[s] the barriers to entry" for candidates, and that other cities like Burbank had recently adopted similar trustee voting processes.
Several comments opposed the map, broadly agreeing with the District’s comments. There will be a second hearing on the matter on Feb. 10 at 9:30 a.m. at the SMMUSD District office.
