Three seats will be up for election in 2020, two in 2022; Rocha, Householder currently live in same district

By Allen Payton

At a special meeting on Monday, July 1, the Antioch School Board approved a map for their first ever district elections on a 4-0 vote. Trustee Crystal Sawyer-White was absent at the time of the vote. The new districts will take effect during the November 2020 election. AUSD Trustee Map 4B & Statistics

The entire meeting lasted a little more than four minutes, with no members of the public speaking. The board’s vote took place during the first two-and-a-half minutes of the meeting, and Sawyer-White arrived about three minutes late. (View the meeting, on the District’s YouTube Channel, here).

According to the staff report, Board members are currently elected in “at-large” elections, where each member is elected by voters throughout the District. At its May 23, 2018, meeting, the Board adopted a resolution No. 2017-18-28 indicating its intent to transition to “by-trustee-area” elections, in compliance with the state’s Voting Rights Act, and in response to a threatened lawsuit. The same attorney who threatened to sue the District, is the same one who threatened the City of Antioch, which also changed to district elections beginning in 2020.

In May, the district published four proposed trustee area maps on the District’s website for consideration by the Board and the community. Community meetings were held on May 28, 2019, and June 1, 2019. As a result, revised scenario maps 1A and 4A were created and posted. An additional map, scenario map 5, was submitted for consideration on June 6, 2019, and posted on June 7, 2019.

At the June 12, 2019, Board of Education meeting, Trustee Ellie Householder requested revisions to scenario map 4A. Scenario map 4B was then created and posted.

A hearing was held at the June 26, 2019, Board meeting and the Board members requested an additional hearing, which occurred Monday night.

The vote also means not all trustees will be up for election at the same time, but all five seats will be up for four-year terms. Three seats will be up in 2020, those of Board President Gary Hack, Vice President Diane Gibson-Gray and Sawyer-White. None of them live in the same district as another trustee. Hack lives in District 4, Gibson-Gray in District 1 and Sawyer-White in District 3.

For the two seats up for election in 2022, the other two trustees, Mary Rocha and Householder live in District 5. So, if both choose to run for reelection, they will either have to run against each other or one would have to move to the other district. None of the incumbents currently live in District 2, which is also up for election in 2022.

The districts are based on the 2010 Census and will have to be redrawn in 2021, prior to the 2022 election and be based on the District population determined by the 2020 Census. Rocha and Householder may end up not living in the same district. But, if they end up living in the district of another trustee who was elected in 2020, they would either have to move to the other district or not be able to run.

The five districts as currently drawn have population sizes ranging from 20,810 to 22,507, and each includes at least two elementary schools.

Filing for candidates in the November 2020 election opens next July.

the attachments to this post:

AUSD Trustee Map 4B & Statistics
AUSD Trustee Map 4B & Statistics

AUSD Trustee District Election Map 4B

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 3rd, 2019 at 5:22 pm and is filed under Education, News, Politics & Elections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.