Foothill-De Anza district sets hearings on trustee area maps

The Foothill-De Anza Community College District has taken the next step in changing the way it elects its board of trustees.

The district is in the process of dividing into five trustee areas, and draft boundary maps prepared by consultant Redistricting Partners are now posted on the district’s website for review and comment by community members. A few draft maps that have been proposed by members of the public using the district’s mapping tool are also on view. All maps can be found at www.fhda.edu/ trustee-areas

The draft maps show how local communities could be divided to create five trustee areas of roughly equal population size based on 2020

Census data and provide Census data on each proposed trustee area. This change in election system affects Cupertino, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Palo Alto and small portions of San Jose, Santa Clara and Saratoga.

These maps will provide the basis for upcoming discussions about establishing five trustee areas for elections starting next year, when voters will select one candidate from each area to serve on the district board instead of electing board members at large.

Public hearings on the draft maps are set for Monday and Jan. 10, both at 7 p.m. The agenda and location information for the public hearings, along with instructions for how to make a public comment, can be found the Thursday before the meetings at https://go.boarddocs.com/ ca/f hda/Board.nsf/Public under the heading “Regular Meeting of the Board of Trustees.”

At public hearings in September and October, the district gathered information about “communities of interest” within its boundaries to help in drawing the draft maps. Communities of interest are populations that live together in a contiguous geographic area who have common social and economic interests. They include ethnic and language minorities as well as groups that are united by shared values and circumstances.

According to the district, “Bringing like people together for fair and effective representation is one of key principles in drawing the new trustee area boundary lines.”

The district board is slated to adopt a final trustee area map on Feb. 14.