Proposed voting areas made public

The public was mum during a public hearing held Tuesday to discuss four potential plans to carve the Saugus Union School District into voting areas.

Tuesday was the first opportunity for members of the public to address the Saugus school board on the possible ways for the district to divide itself into five voting areas, each tied to a seat on the board.

But after a brief presentation from the district’s demographer, no one from the audience of about 20 at Tuesday’s board meeting spoke up on the matter.

“There’s going to be a lot more meetings, so they (the public) will have a lot more chances to speak,” said board President Rose Koscielny after the meeting.

There are a number of factors that are looked at when creating voting areas, including population, geography and the

cohesiveness of the areas themselves, said the district’s demographer, Dave Ely of Compass Demographics.

The district’s four proposed maps are dubbed the “red map,” “orange map,” “green map,” and “blue map,” and they include some markedly different strategies for piecing the district together.

The “red map,” for instance, includes a large voting area that would run down the middle of the district’s boundaries, taking in Plum Canyon Elementary School, Rosedell Elementary School and Emblem Academy.

The “blue map” is largely identical to the “red” option in the western portions of the Saugus district, but instead lumps Plum Canyon, Skyblue Mesa and Cedarcreek elementary schools in one voting area and Emblem, Rosedell and Rio Vista Elementary School in another.

The “orange map” and “green map” feature a smaller central voting areas that includes Santa Clarita, Highlands and Rosedell elementary schools, with the other voting areas encircling it.

Each of the voting areas outlined by the district in its four proposed maps would include three elementary schools, Ely said.

“The attendance areas for the school are not tied entirely to the districts,” he noted. “In fact, most of the attendance areas are divided.”

Each of the voting areas would also be largely similar in population.

Saugus board members approved the move to voting-area elections — in which voters within a specific area will elect a board member to represent that area — in May.

The district was hit with a lawsuit in April that alleged its use of at-large voting — in which eligible residents could vote for candidates for all of the board’s five seats on a given ballot — violated the California Voting Rights Act by preventing Latino residents from being able to elect candidates of their choice.

About 22.5 percent of Saugus’s about 101,731 residents are Latino, according to information from the district.

However, only 18.9 percent of the citizen votingage population is Latino, while almost 64 percent is white. Another 11.4 percent is Asian.

None of the maps released by the district includes a voting area with even 30 percent of the citizen voting-age population being Latino.

Those who missed Tuesday’s hearing have other opportunities to weigh in on the proposed maps.

Community meetings will be held at three district elementary schools in October, and a second public hearing on the maps is scheduled during the board’s Nov. 3 meeting.

The maps are available on the district’s website, www. SaugusUSD.org, and at each of the district’s schools.

Comments or questions can also be sent to district Superintendent Joan Lucid by email at jlucid@saugususd.org.

“We’ll listen to what the public has to say, and the board will take it under advisement,” Lucid said Tuesday. “And if they want any changes, they’ll direct staff and those changes will be reflected on the maps.”