Map guaranteeing Leisure World a seat eliminated

By Jeannette Andruss

After months of discussion, two dozen community meetings and 11 draft maps, The Los Alamitos Unified School District Board of Education will decide between two maps when it adopts a final map of new trustee voting areas at its next meeting on Jan. 21.

The vote will be the final step for Board of Education members as the district changes how Board members are elected. LAUSD is going from an at-large voting system to one with five trustee voting areas. Starting with the November 2020 election, voters will no longer select candidates for all five seats on the Board but instead will vote for one candidate from their area to represent them.

“The Board is moving to a trustee-area voting system because the California Voting Rights Act strongly discourages the current at-large system,” LAUSD Superintendent Andrew Pulver wrote in a message to community members on Jan. 9. “Dividing the school district into trustee areas helps ensure that minority group voting rights in the community are protected and not abridged or diluted.”

The district encompasses all of Seal Beach, Los Alamitos, Rossmoor along with small parts of Cypress and Long Beach. Each trustee voting area must have an equal population of around 9,600 people. Since August, LAUSD has been working with a professional demographer to draw the boundaries of the trustee areas. The first five draft maps were released in October and meant to show a variety of options. Revised maps came out in November and more last month. Each round of revisions was informed by community input gathered at a series of public meetings and hearings.

At the January 7 LAUSD Board of Education meeting, trustees narrowed down their choices to two maps: Yellow 3 and Green 4.

“Together as a community we have all worked really hard to figure out what works and what doesn’t,” Board Vice President Marlys Davidson said at the meeting.

Final Two Maps Split up Leisure World & Evenly Distribute School Sites

What didn’t work was keeping the Seal Beach retirement community of Leisure World in one trustee area, a move that would have basically guaranteed the neighborhood a seat on the board. The Orange 2 map, which would have done exactly that, was eliminated in a unanimous vote by Board members at the Jan. 7 meeting.

All four of the people who spoke during public comment that evening opposed the Orange 2 map. “I urge you strongly not to adopt the Orange map,” resident Jody Roubanis told Board members before the vote. Another woman said it would be “ill-advised” to give Leisure World its own seat on the Board. “I also do not like the Orange map,” Seal Beach Mayor Schelly Sustarsic told Board members.

After calling for the Orange 2 map to be eliminated, Board member Karen Russell explained she was concerned with how the map put all of Leisure World in one trustee area with the Seal Beach neighborhood of College Park West. Leisure World would make up 84% of voters in the trustee area which Russell characterized as unfair. “[College Park West residents] do have kids in the school district,” Russell explained and added that they also pay for LAUSD bond measures. “That was my big bugaboo,” she said. Leisure World bars anyone younger than 55 from living there and does not vote on or pay for bond measures.

Board member Diana Hill noted how no one from Leisure World had ever run for a Board seat and discussed the “very difficult position” the district would be in if no candidate from the majority-Leisure World trustee area emerged.

Davidson said the Board and district had tried to connect with Leisure World with little success. “We can’t give a seat to an area that doesn’t deeply engage in the education of our children,” Davidson said.

What worked for Board members was to pick two final maps that split up Leisure World. The Yellow 3 map divides up the retirement community into three trustee areas with Leisure World representing between 27% to 34% of the voters in those areas. In the Green 4 map, Leisure World is part of four trustee areas and accounts for 16% to 27% of the voters in them.

Both maps also distribute the district’s nine schools across four of the five trustee areas. The Green 3 map was also eliminated at the Jan. 7 Board meeting. It was almost identical to the Green 4 map except for it had Rossmoor Elementary in a trustee area with Weaver and Lee Elementary schools.

In both maps, the most ethnically diverse part of the district covering part of Cypress and Old Town Los Alamitos is kept together in one trustee area. Davidson lives in that trustee area and is up for reelection in 2022. Board members Hill and David Boyer are in the same trustee area in both final maps. Boyer is up for reelection this year and Hill must run again in 2022. Board President Megan Cutuli and Russell are also in the same trustee area in both maps, but Russell has said she will not seek reelection. Cutuli will campaign this year. In both maps, two trustee areas are vacant meaning no incumbent lives there.

What’s Next?

The final vote will happen on Jan. 21 during the Board’s regularly scheduled meeting which begins at 6:30pm in the District Office Board Room at 10293 Bloomfield Street in Los Alamitos. You can still submit feedback at the meeting or by emailing trusteeareaelection@losal.org. The final maps and more information can be found at losal.org/voting.

After the LAUSD Board of Education picks the map, it must be approved by the Orange County Committee on School District Organization. The committee will also hold a public hearing on the map.  If it’s accepted, it will go to the State Board of Education for approval.

The Ready, Set, Go Preschool program, sponsored by Southland Credit Union, is taking registrations for spring and summer classes.

If you are looking for a quality and affordable preschool program for your child that focuses on your child’s needs in a fun environment, look no further.

The Los Alamitos Ready, Set, Go, Preschool program will engage your child in science, math, technology, arts, music, and reading/phonics on a daily and weekly basis. Academics is a major emphasis in sight word reading, math, science and art, in addition to the other important subjects of socialization and manners. For more information please visit www.cityoflosalamitos.org or call (562) 430-1073.

The 2019 Los Alamitos Education Foundation’s Fall after-school classes have come and gone, leaving their mark on more than 1,300 students, as classes for LAEF’s 2020 Spring After School program begin to fill up.

LAEF is continuing to offer free World Language classes to 2^nd and 3^rd graders across the district.   Nearly 200 students enrolled in these free classes ranging from Mandarin and Japanese to Spanish, French and American Sign Language depending on the school site. LAEF’s goal is to expose children to languages they can pursue further in their secondary education. Parents and students alike were delighted with the program and excited to see it continue.

LAEF also expanded the popular Skatedogs after-school skateboarding class to three additional elementary school campuses this year. Other popular after school classes included seasonal food exploration, science, LEGO engineering, musical theater and gymnastics.

Registration is open for LAEF’s 2020 Spring After School program, offering many of the popular classes enjoyed in the Fall curriculum as well as classes particularly suited to Springtime, including Flag Football, Baseball, Golf and “Our Friends in the Sea” Microbiology.

LAEF is able to enrich the learning experience of even more students this Spring by continuing to offer tuition scholarships, thanks to the support of grant donors like Run Seal Beach, the Roosters of Orange County and the Miller Foundation. For more information on scholarships, visit LAEF4Kids.org/scholarships.

LAEF is the non-profit partner of Los Alamitos Unified School District. LAEF enhances educational excellence by providing after-school and summer enrichment programs to children in grades Pre-K to 12. LAEF impacts all students by providing significant funding for STEAM teachers and instruction, as well as igniting new programs and providing valuable resources. For more information, visit www.LAEF4kids.org or call (562) 799-4700 Extension 80424 today.

By Jeannette Andruss

The Los Alamitos Unified School District is in its final stages of changing how voters elect trustees to its Board of Education. But there’s still time for the public to weigh in on the process.

Since August, LAUSD has been transitioning from an at-large voting system to one with trustee voting areas. That means, starting in 2020, voters will no longer select all five of the trustees on the Board. Instead, voters will pick one candidate to represent their specific trustee area every four years.

LAUSD hired a professional demographer to draw the boundaries for the new five voting trustee areas. Since October, eleven draft maps have been produced. Each draft map was created and altered based on input from the Board of Education trustees at public hearings and feedback from community members at more than two dozen meetings.

Four maps have emerged as the final options up for discussion. All of the maps, including an interactive version, can be viewed at losal.org/voting.

LAUSD Superintendent Dr. Andrew Pulver encourages residents to check out the newest draft maps and offer comments to help the Board of Education make a choice.

“Really look at the maps,” Dr. Pulver said in a phone interview on Tuesday. “Let us know which one really best represents your community of interest.” Dr. Pulver explained your community of interest could be your neighborhood, your city, or where your children attend school.

You can voice your opinion at a public hearing on Tuesday, January 7, during the regular Board of Education meeting at 6:30 p.m. at 10293 Bloomfield Street in Los Alamitos. Board trustees are expected to vote on a final map at their meeting on January 21. You can also email feedback to trusteeareaelection@losal.org.

‘There’s not one good or one bad map’

The district has nine schools spread across Seal Beach, Rossmoor and Los Alamitos but also encompasses parts of Cypress and Long Beach. Each trustee area must have an equal population size of about 9,600 people, which includes children and other nonvoters.

LAUSD hired the firm National Demographics Corporation to draw the maps dividing up the district in different ways to show a variety of options. The maps must adhere to state and federal laws and are based on criteria prioritized by the Board of Education.

First, there were five draft maps. Then, after public comment, a few were removed, including two that placed all of the incumbents in separate trustee areas. Revised draft maps were created after more public comment. Now, after another round of public hearings, the latest during the Dec. 10 Board of Education meeting, four draft maps are being considered – Orange 2, Yellow 3, Green 3 and Green 4.

“It makes the choices clearer,” Megan Cutuli, the newly named Board President, said at the Dec. 10 meeting.

“There’s not one good or one bad map,” Pulver said this week. “They just reflect different interests.”

So, what are the different interests of the four maps?

All of the draft maps keep the most ethnically diverse area of the district in one trustee area to ensure it has representation. That area covers parts of Los Alamitos and Cypress.

The map known as Orange 2 is the most compact and divides up the school district roughly by municipal boundaries. For instance, Seal Beach is split between two trustee areas along Westminster Boulevard.

Leisure World is entirely in its own trustee area in the Orange 2 map, which essentially guarantees the private retirement community a representative on the Board.

“We knew [Leisure World] was going to be our conundrum,” Dr. Pulver said this week.

There are a few concerns with Leisure World, which bars anyone under 55 from living there. Leisure World residents do not vote on or pay for any LAUSD bond measures, but they do vote for the Board or Education. Partially because no school-age children can live there, some community members question Leisure World’s connection to the school district.

Resident Donna Artukovic is one of them. She has attended many public hearings and initially supported keeping Leisure World in one trustee area. But at the Dec. 10 meeting she told Board members she now supports splitting it up.

After the meeting, Artukovic said she doesn’t feel Leisure World residents have enough of a personal interest in what’s happening with the district.  “It doesn’t mean they don’t care about it,” she said, acknowledging that many of the residents are educated and turn out to vote. “It just means they don’t have a stake.”

Barbara Farrell has another view. At the Dec. 10 meeting, Farrell said Leisure World is its own community of interest and should not be broken up. She said many of the residents are very well-educated and engaged.  “They have a right to a voice,” she told the Board members.

Board member Karen Russell said at the Dec. 10 meeting that no matter how Leisure World is incorporated into the trustee areas, its residents will have the option of running for a seat on the Board. In her public comments, resident Jody Roubanis said that based on her research, no Leisure World resident has ever held a seat on the Board.

The other concern is that because Leisure World is populated with residents who are all voting age, they could outvote other neighborhoods in their trustee area.

Right now, Leisure World represents about 20% of the registered voters in the entire district, according to Justin Levitt, the demographer in charge of drawing the boundaries of the trustee areas for LAUSD. Levitt based the figure on data from the 2016 and 2018 elections.

In the Orange 2 map, Leisure Would represents 84% of the registered voters in their trustee area. The Yellow 3 map breaks Leisure World into three trustee areas with Leisure World accounting for between 27% to 34% of the registered voters in each of the three trustee areas. The Green 3 and Green 4 maps split up Leisure World into four trustee areas. Leisure World would account for at least 16% and up to 28% of the registered voters in those four areas.

Balancing School Sites

Another debate is how to arrange the district’s nine school campuses into the five trustee areas. LAUSD has six elementary schools, two middle schools and Los Alamitos High School.

At the Dec. 10 meeting, Rossmoor resident Joel Block said using school locations to draw the boundaries doesn’t make sense. Block said his kids attended LAUSD schools but thinks drawing districts that are contiguous and follow municipal boundaries makes the most sense.

“Stick to what you adopted,” Block said, referring to the measures the Board supported at the outset of the process. Later in the meeting, Dr. Pulver clarified that school attendance areas are part of the criteria adopted by the Board of Education for the drawing of the maps.

Rossmoor resident Larry Strawther spoke passionately about the importance of schools being considered as communities of interest. He said many LAUSD families connect with one another at their elementary schools where most students spend six years, from kindergarten to fifth grade.

“The schools are the commonality,” Strawther said and encouraged the drawing of trustee areas by schools. “Start with the elementary schools and go from there.”

“I do believe communities of interest are related to the schools,” Board trustee Diana Hill said.

Hill and Board President Cutuli also spoke in favor of spreading out the district’s schools across multiple trustee areas.

The Orange 2 map concentrates the district’s nine schools into two of the five trustee areas with J.H. McGaugh Elementary being the only school in a third trustee area. Two of the trustee areas have no campuses in the Orange 2 map. The Yellow 3, Green 3 and Green 4 maps spread the schools across four of the five trustee areas.

‘Democracy at its finest’

The public is being encouraged to speak up because Board members are listening.

At the Dec. 10 public hearing, Board Vice President Marlys Davidson said she was ready to ask for one map to be eliminated but said she heard some arguments from the public that changed her thinking.

“I was going to be opposed to Green, but I’m not now,” Davidson said.

Board President Cutuli thanked residents for the feedback. “It does impact our thoughts,” she said.

“I think it’s important to know that the Board is still deciding, and weighing all its options,” Levitt wrote in an email to The Sun. “They are continuing to ask for input from any district resident on the plan adopted.”

This week, Dr. Pulver emphasized that the public has already greatly impacted the process. He said not one of the original five drafts maps is still being considered because the community voiced their opinions to make changes.

“It’s really democracy at its finest,” he said.