001okay it's five o'clock and so i'm calling this special board of education meeting to order and we will begin with the flag salute so i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you yay all right we'll let our last board member come in and take his seat so he isn't rushed and just give it a few seconds while i'm waiting for him i will let everybody know that the lcap family and community meetings are starting the first one will be tuesday the eighth at six o'clock at your student school so you have a student in a chico unified school you will have a lcap meeting and snacks and child care will
002be provided thank you all right so we have mr tennis and now we can move forward um tonight's uh is a discussion action calendar that's uh very specific um it is to deal with the california voting rights act the draft maps and the sequence by district elections and adopt resolution number 1570-22 establishing district-based elections the final map for those elections and the sequence for those elections and i do have a speaker's list so um again this is only comments on the map issue that's in front of us so the first person i have on the speakers list is amber brown all right amber and you'll have three minutes and he will show you a card or ring a bell okay ring a bell all right good evening board members my name is amber brown and
003i am here to express my opposition to the orange maps both a and b and would like the board to adopt the green map it is my understanding and i thank ms dalby for sending me this information that the maps are being selected based on a set of criteria most important being the two criteria that you are legally required to comply with the california voters rights act and creating districts with nearly equal population additional criteria being considered are communities of interest social economic data housing tenure neighborhoods of interest school boundaries and last and lowest priority is election sequencing essentially mapping around incumbent's addresses the green map most represents the ideology behind the voters rights act number one and nearly equal population number two also most represents number three while the two orange maps meet some
004of the key points they are below the green map in the top three crowded criteria they seem to focus on keeping trusty areas in intact mapping around their addresses referred to as election sequencing number eight on the list the last criteria and the lowest priority the orange map completely negates the whole purpose of the voters rights act and behind at large versus ward base let's define gerrymandering the manipulation of an electoral constituency's boundaries as to favor one party or class gerrymandering protects a party lines and keeps bad incumbents in power is that what's going on here i'm not sure but it seems suspicious that two of our current board members favor the orange maps with a priority of election sequencing mapping around incumbent's addresses and continue to eliminate maps blue and purple that most represent
005the top three criteria including what you're legally obligated to comply with voting rights act and nearly equal population please adopt the green map tonight that both that best meets the top three criteria including the voter rights act this is the right thing to do and remember upset enough parents and one of us may be sitting up there with you or in some cases without you thank you have a good evening dr kaiser point of personal privilege i can't access the um the maps on on my agenda oh my rescuer was that your yeah i i want to be able to follow the speakers by looking at what they're speaking to oh all right and okay so with that uh our highly skilled tech genius uh we'll move to speaker to uh logan wilson hello there
006my name is logan wilson i have three boys who go to school here in chico a fourth grader and a little chico creek and then two middle schoolers in marsh i'm also a business owner here in town i work in the real estate sector i have a property management firm and i work in the agricultural business as well you don't know me um i don't know most of you but it doesn't mean that i've been idly sitting by watching one of the most tenuous times in history to be a school board member and to be a parent as well honestly but i'm here specifically to express my support for the green map and my disapproval of the orange one from what i've seen and there's no reason for it to be untrue the green map
007is the only objective one left it really does emboggle my mind i think the term gerrymandering has actually snuck its way all the way down to our local school board here in chico california that type of political maneuvering seems like it should be reserved for washington d.c or the house of cards on netflix or something else but not here in our local schools where our kids and my kids are the collateral damage it's it's also appalling that there's simply even just the appearance that the current school board is attempting to choose their constituency through the orange map in an effort to preserve their own position this goes entirely against one of the most powerful tools of the democratic process which allows constituents to choose their own leaders not the leaders choosing their constituents i implore
008that each of you have the decency to cognitively remove yourself from the situation and simply evaluate how it looks to all of us parents on the outside i'd hope that the self-directed and self-serving districting actually flies in the face of what you believe or at least what you did at some point in time mr lando i don't know you you don't know me but i urge you to hold true to your previous statements and have the integrity to stand firm in the midst of conflict you are on record disagreeing with drawing the map lines around trustees and i simply ask that you hold firm to that and change and don't change with a fickle wound circumstance i'm no political strategist but i am a business strategist of some sorts and honestly my read on this
009situation is if you vote for the orange map and approve that tonight you're significantly overplaying your hand you see like it or not each of your performance has been under a microscope for all of us parents we've been backseat drivers for the last two years and i don't envy your position for that that's a tough place to be for each of you at 30 seconds perfect so all that to say what what you have as a result of that is a very galvanized base of parents who crave common sense stability and putting our kids first at every decision so i'd caution that if you vote for the orange map you and all the incumbents will be met with strategic and tactical response from us parents just like the speaker before we mentioned when your term
010expires so from the bottom my heart i do honestly want to thank each of you for the efforts you put forth in the time because this has not been an easy experience i can imagine it's been extremely difficult and it's okay to disagree i hope that you vote for the green map not the orange one thank you all right my next speaker is julie treat three with the t reach um hello everyone i'm here tonight to kind of wrap up this process that i've been involved in since the beginning in september um i've decided this year i was going to be involved in all of these census and the map drawings the county i did i started here then with the school board and then i'm right now starting with the city so this is
011just about me following and wanting to really get involved with my constitutional process um so i'm just gonna go through kind of how i've been involved in this thing to give you an idea so september 1st we got the introduction to king consulting and the attorneys and we heard all about the um the cvra and the requirements to make sure we don't disenfranchise a hispanic voter we had three um inputs from the community we wanted one high school or two high schools or we wanted elementary school focus so that's kind of how we started down the path on september 1st september 2nd we had another meeting just to make sure we got public input as required by law and there was one that was submitted online october 2nd um we didn't have a meeting specific
012to the maps we had a big teacher's contract going on and um and there was again a lot of talk about the coven okay october 20th this is when the census data actually came in and um so they were able to populate the maps and produce the blue the green the purple um we want to make sure we preserve trusty areas and uh talked about the census blocks hispanic community again much more evenly distributed so that was a good thing and again we started really doing the deep dive into the numbers into all the spreadsheets and you guys started asking for more data i think at that point then we got to november 3rd and that's when again we had all hell break loose because of the vaccine mandate resolution whatever you want to call
013it which kind of puts us in the backseat again but we still have a time to get to um we talked again again about the very end of the meeting after that blue green yellow you guys give your input socioeconomic we talked all about hispanic numbers again went through all the analysis again in detail and this is when the um we got to then the november 17th the infamous november 17th meeting this is when blue got eliminated and that just like what happened that was the number one comment commented popular map and that's when we were told the meeting was going to be delayed from december 15th which was the original date to get approval until january 19th so then we get to january 19th and this is like to me basically redoing all over
014again that original october 20 from the census i had to go through all this again with the orange maps with all the data now how's it applying to my house et cetera the sequencing comes in it was just it was like we should have done that last year needless to say it is what it is so this one here we eliminate the purple map the number one map that your spanish community voted for was the purple you all voted for the purple pretty much past past past this this i had no idea why you eliminated the purple i submitted my own maps as did another parent we had to basically on february 16th we do the whole thing again because there was somebody not absent so today here we are february 16th my number one
015issue here you're stepping on the constitution i'm here to represent the democracy the constitution this is the basis for it by drawing a map with your home addresses you better tell me right now did you move last year are you gonna move next year because if this was drawn based on your home interest now what if you move what if you move next month it shouldn't matter anything at all where you live it matters about who and what we want as voters and number two the tax dollars thank you [Applause] all right our next speaker is loretta therese good evening my name is loretta torres last time we met i was no name this time i did figure out how to put my name in i'm a grandma of three children in your districts i
016have also as a grandparent watched how this has unfolded over the last two years with covet and masks and mandates and i do believe this has been hard for you but i want you to know that these parents are not going to forget when you come up for election so your whatever maps you're thinking of drawing to help yourselves there are little lines parents are going to find a way to vote you out and my comments now are really to the people who are watching and listening find somebody in the districts go out and beat the bushes and find a good candidate to run against you because you're not going to be here the next time if you don't vote for green thank you [Applause] all right my next is joshua flash is that correct
017okay all right my name is joshua flash i'm clearly here to support the green map and not the orange ones in november miss robinson told chico news in review and i quote there's no consideration for incumbency our concern is setting the districts up appropriately where people where people on the board live we haven't even looked at well the orange map came obviously after you guys looked at where you guys live that was after let's keep in mind the purple and the blue maps got voted out okay uh the consultants tried to defend the orange map by claiming it relieved election complexities which i'll tell you what i think that means in a minute i don't know if you realize or not but your vote tonight is going to convey one of two possible conclusions to
018voters if you that you'll be able to win an election based on your actions i can even though i disagree with that and i don't think you guys have done this right for families recently with the covid situation i can appreciate that kind of integrity however if you choose the orange map then you make it pretty clear that your failure as board members you're confident in winning the election solely you're not competent and win this election solely based on merit probably because you're in action to do what was best for our children by ignoring mass choice and refusing to hold teachers accountable when their biased detrimental treatment students made the mask list are students that made the mask of choice they were treated terribly um so you've essentially resorted to gerrymandering the map makes it
019easier for all of you to keep your seats i'm not sure even if that will help but that's the way it looks to everybody and with that please vote for green and not blue or orange all right and our last speaker is deanna lindstrom hi my name is deanna lindstrom and i thank you for giving me the chance to speak on these maps that seem to be an issue no one asked for these maps no one in the community wanted these maps except the few that have shown just how power hungry they truly are money was spent to create these maps money taken from our children that could have been better spent on nutrition arts music sports and even health care in terms of emotional support for our children that need our help this was
020done for a sole purpose of better positioning with bias for certain incumbents to have more area to control the community has put their input on the maps they want and you got rid of them it so happened those are the maps that benefit certain power hungry members the least the ones that are still on the table benefit kaiser and robinson the most go figure again the community did not ask for them but since we are here i vote for the green map and so do many others in this community please vote for the green map we need new leadership kathleen kaiser you have never had the best interest of my kids or anyone else's in mind you've been a supervisor since 2006 and have become complacent in what you are doing instead of what you
021really should be doing for the community as a whole not just for your personal gain you are rude even when responding to someone you do not agree with even though they were polite to you time to move on eileen robinson you too cannot lead without a directive from the teachers union you ignore every parent that does not agree with you and you talk bad about us behind your back don't think i don't know what you say on social media and as a member of the parent union we know it is time for you to move on also we need representatives for the parents and children not for board members that only see themselves as being high and mighty and disregard for the well-being of the whole community tom lando please vote green it is in
022the bet and stress of your community but whatever it is you guys decide i'm watching your every move every decision and will speak at every board meeting to hold you kathleen kaiser and eileen robinson accountable for continuing to take from and ignore our children including keeping the mess [Applause] so there were three other names on the back and so i was mistaken so we have terry dimarco terry demarco oh good okay hello my name is terry demarco i don't have children in the chico school district but i am a parent uh from everything that i've seen and watched on all the youtube videos it seems to me that purple was a much better map than even the green or certainly the orange and apparently i'm not sure what that is by the way why when
023that happened the purple was just you know cast aside i didn't understand it when i was watching it on the video anyway if uh citizens who are taxpayers um are given any choice i'll say the green map because it just seems like it's a better option unless you want to go back to purple purple might be something you want to think about um seems the only reason for what i've understood unless i'm mistaken which i don't think i am the orange map seems to benefit some maybe not all but the school board members and i don't think that's a good choice i think you need to put the children and the family's needs ahead of your own anyway um i just think that's what y'all should do is think about the constituents and people who
024you actually i would assume some of you might consider that you actually work for the people that pay taxes in the city um so yeah the green map instead of the orange map without a doubt um we just need i just think that if you don't consider the purple or the green map that there's a lot of parents who are going to see to it that you don't have to worry about this process and all these questions in the future that's it [Applause] all right our next speaker is jordan colby jordan colby okay good evening board um i'm jordan i have two kids at parkview elementary one at marsh junior high i would urge the board to select the only objectively created map at this point by selecting the green map it's a waste of
025taxpayer dollars to pay demographers to come up with maps that make sense for a school district if in the end you just create districts around incumbent addresses that would be pretty easy there were better maps at the beginning of the process as i stated when i addressed the board the purple map made the most sense to me as elementary school boundaries can be very meaningful communities of interest regarding neighborhood schools there was a lot of interest in the blue map i feel the green map is probably the weakest of the original draft maps but because you've disposed of the blue and the purple maps the green map is the only one left that doesn't have the primary purpose of drawing a district for the specific for this specific board this process will create trustee districts
026for the future of chico unified don't make it based on the present members of the school board there's a recent poll by uc berkeley institute of governmental studies and it shows that voter confidence in our public school system has hit an all-time low eleven years ago pollsters asked a series of questions to california voters about their attitudes regarding public education at the time 55 percent gave their public schools an a or a b grade that has now dropped to 20 percent 20 percentage points to 35 percent this time around 25 percent of those surveyed gave public school grade schools a grade d or f up from 10 percent the last survey so i ask why is that it's because parents and students don't feel they have an advocate in education my experience with chico unified
027is that our teachers and administrators are doing an excellent job i love my kids schools i have only praise to say for their administrators and teachers but parents and students need a voice people can see that very few school boards were able to stand up to teachers unions and provide leadership when they were needed the most in the last two years school children suffered through needless school shutdowns and continue to be subject to covet protocols that are more stringent for kids than what we have utilized in healthcare i'm a healthcare worker my kids taken way more covid tests asymptomatically to play basketball than i have to go treat immunocompromised patients those failures are a direct result of an inappropriate relationship between school boards and teachers unions gerrymandering of election districts just looks like more of
028what people have come to expect from their public school boards thank you all right thank you all right and then for real the last speaker is gina bax good evening thank you so much for having me here tonight it was so nice to see the whole community and they were working together on the process of redistricting a couple of months ago the two groups were extremely comfortable with the original three maps they weren't perfect but somehow we got to manage it because these maps stayed true to their strategic intent of advocating for communities of interest which is one of the most important principles of the fair maps act for example the purple map had the highest percentage of hispanic at 24 24.8 and was the only one that emphasized on elementary school boundaries in constraint
029in construct the orange maps have the lowest percentage of hispanic and will and will place kaiser on my district which makes me a little bit concerned the last minute addition of these two orange maps only two people in our entire community requested has also created anxiety confusion and frustration within the board and the community at the board level for example board members showed no interest in this process and didn't even show up at the meetings when their vote was essential to expedite this process this kind of pressure put on our board members could have been avoided especially when they are just trying to straight to stay true to themselves thank you lando for that within our community people go together to learn and educate each other about this process we have park meetings we create
030social media support groups and reach out to board members for guidance and advice we are desperate and just want our kids to be well represented two years and almost 80 000 dollars of taxpayer money later here we are rushing to meet the map deadline to avoid legal sanctions all this time and money could have been used to accommodate the needs of the hundreds of kids who have been left outside their classrooms under extremely bad weather conditions for not complying with mandates there are no laws and have not been proved to diminish the spread of covet even our homeless have been offered shelter and warming centers to overcome the challenges of nature i would like to take this opportunity to take to thank all those kids who have stood up for themselves outside your classrooms all
031day long with no direction on how to do your homework and to all those kids who were brave enough to speak at these war meetings you are true heroes and you deserve an apology from all of us [Applause] all right that's the end of our speaker list and i do thank you for taking the time and the emotional energy to show up so what we have then before us is the one item the california voting rights act draft maps and sequences by district elections and to adopt the resolution establishing district-based elections and the final map for those elections and the sequence for those elections so is there a board member that would like to from yeah from us yes absolutely did you have a question i think mr lando just asked my question which is
032can we discuss without emotion on the floor yes absolutely thank you doctor well we can ask the technical questions of staff before emotion is on the board no um i don't have questions i mean we've all looked at this data a long time so i think we know we know anybody else i have a question um and mr gant you might want to get ready um put on your thinking cap um i understood from our colleague um ms dalby today that she was delayed because of a transportation issue um i took the liberty of calling the elections office today and i understood from them that they didn't particularly mind if this decision were put off another week do you have mr gant you seem knowledgeable about what our process is and time frame is do
033you feel there is an extremely compelling reason for us to move forward on this tonight rather than put it off one more week when we could be joined by ms dalby and we would have the full board well um ultimately it's the board's decision uh whether to move forward tonight so that's that's not there's no legal compulsion the uh the deadline for the county committee to complete its work and presumably pass a resolution that approves further approves the map that's been selected by your district and to also enter an order that the election that would otherwise be required under the law could be waived the deadline for that would the absolute deadline would be prior to 125 days before the election the elections office they typically don't want to get that 126 days before the
034election i haven't spoken lately uh or at all actually with the elections office i think we heard some comments from someone from the elections office one or two meetings back that indicated they have a very full plate and they would like to get it you know with uh all due haste that that's reasonable so i i can't speak to what their soft deadline is for that so i think it's just a question of what the board wants to do i also can't speak for the county committee we tend to think about the county committee as a check off the box perhaps or at least sometimes it's thought of that way they are an independent agency and they have every right to once it becomes before them to ask questions to request more information to have
035doubts they're not required to approve the map that comes before them and they're not required to waive the election and i would it would be not appropriate for me to comment on what their process would be we would certainly hope that when it comes before them that they would be ready and willing to move forward on the meeting that they receive it at this time the latest information i had was that they had intended and hoped to have their meeting on this topic on march 8th yeah and i don't have any uh i don't have any clarification as we sit here right now whether that intent or hope has changed so i hope that answers the question yeah it does thank you um you know um this isn't the outcome that i wanted tonight um
036but i think that um given that our deadline for making this decision is july 6th which is two months away longer than significantly longer than two months away um is that three months or four months away can somebody help me out here um july anyway i i just feel that the county could could pivot on this one and could figure out a way to approve our decision given that we're the largest school district in the county by far and since ms dalby is unable to be here because of just unfortunate thing with her travel arrangements i think that it's the responsible thing for us to put the decision off for one more week and so i would move that we do that are you making a formal motion yes ma'am all right so a motion
037has been made to postpone the this very specific agenda to the 9th of march i need clarification yes it would coincide with our existing meeting that we're going to have on the 9th of march and that would miss the deadline for the county which is their meeting as far as we know is scheduled for march 8. i would say it's not a deadline i would say it's when they were planning to rubber stamp our decision is there a second for this motion okay so it dies for lack of a second why not may i make a motion yes all right thank you um i'm gonna make a motion just so we can get the discussion portion um i am going to move adoption of the resolution with the green map as the uh adopted map
038second [Applause] i'm sorry to incorrupt so although it's hyper technical i did want to point out that the process is generally first to move the map the recommended map and then after uh assuming that the there is an adoption of a map and a sequence of elections there would be a that information that would be filled in on the resolution so there'd be a second vote to formally approve the resolution which could then be executed and ready for service on the county community at the end of the meeting i just wanted to thank you given that i'd like to amend my motion to adopt the green map second as i mentioned all right so the motion before the board is to adopt the green map and then as pointed out by council it would require
039a further approval of the resolution with the information included so we have a discussion about this may i speak to this yes thank you so much all right a couple of things as many of you pointed out um my commitment was not to care about where incumbents lived and that's perfectly true the only reason i'm voting for the green map is that it has the highest concentration of hispanic latino voters in an area that's it however given that i have a real concern about how this whole process has played out the assumption that we are up here to look out for ourselves and the personal attacks on members of the board well i understand you're angry and frustrated about both the maps and the masks i don't understand it i do understand it i should
040say but i'm worried about what it represents that's interesting because middle school students have no problem at all yep excuse me sir okay my point is that you've already convicted us before we've gone ahead and voted which is frustrating if we're going to talk about i've heard a lot of comments about how people don't trust the school boards anymore and i'm worried about what seems like a nationwide attempt to an attack on public schools i know that none of you attend that i'm not absolutely sure about that thank you for that um and this is no it's fine i'm not flustered i'm just trying to figure out how to dress this best because i would love to get back to a community where we can in fact actually listen to each other without cussing and
041interrupting and yelling and i'm not hand slapping anybody here it's happening everywhere in the state in the county in the city in the nation and the fact that one person continues to post inflammatory and often false facebook messages and the same 40 people come out to yell about it every time it's scary and it's a complete abuse of what you should be doing appreciate that you were concerned about my absence i um though you have no reason to believe me i would like to assure you all that i've had some personal stuff and that i take this very seriously i'm sorry to have missed those meetings that it was in no way about ducking the votes as was not even applied explicitly stated by mr tennis given that the green map is the best one
042because it fulfills the needs that we were required to meet with through the cbra so please continue to dislike me thank you i want to remind you that this is a board meeting and it's not a town hall and inappropriate comments are really not what board meetings are about it is our legal responsibility to make this discussion and this choice which is not reflective necessarily of the comments that are being made so please uh everybody who wanted to submit a speaker card has had a chance to speak and you did so with feeling and so now it's the board's job to discuss the option in front of us thank you dr kaiser yes i would like to speak all right to the motion um i i share your concerns remember lando about um deterioration of
043a process that i've never seen before in the school board school district not school board saying that however i'm going to go back to where we got started with this process from my perspective this was not something we chose i'm not sure if you were on the board yet when we first got oh okay so you you've been here since that first time when we had to agendize this issue before we got sued um once it came before us in the way of oh this is coming might as well accept it i paid as much attention to that issue between board meetings as i i literally paid so little attention [Laughter] the reason why is because i considered this process and having to do this number one i understood why but i didn't see it
044as anything that was going to benefit how well our kids were doing in classes what our aides were doing how many custodians we had i saw it as so disconnected from our educational process that i did not pay attention to the process until you know i had to do it before a board meeting and there was to be a decision in the process of ignoring it the the covet shutdown happened and we suspended our process and i i didn't think about it again until we got word that the sentence information was going to be coming in october and the governor was going to lift the you can't wait any longer you're going to have to do it that's when um you know my attention again went back to this process we had information about the
045fact that our hispanic population is more throughout the community with this last census than it was before there's not as much of a concentration as there was on what we were operating off of in the first few iterations of districts that we had when we first got this started so we had some new information when i take a look at what we have on our plate tonight i i see several things number one there is a higher percentage of hispanic population in trustee area one when i look down at trusty area and then that's on the green map i'm specifically i want to make sure i'm accurate on the orange a the hispanic population doesn't go above 21.2 percent in trustee area one it does go to 22 in trustee area 2 back down to
04621 in trustee area 3 and so it it fluctuates with a lower percentage in trustee area 4 on the orange a and in orange a it's down to 14.8 percent so there are some [Music] deviations between green and the orange maps because orange a and orange b are basically pretty much the same so then i look at the next impact that we we were made aware of just as the um [Music] the consideration of maps had reached the point where we had three and i think we had eliminated one by then but um [Music] we were all each board member individually told that the sequencing process that we also had to approve which we hadn't talked about yet would create a situation with all three of the purple blue and green maps that we had
047not considered yet but it would present situations where current board members in order to keep their seats if they chose to would have to run against each other that you know has never been a possibility in this school district before it's the creation of this process that put us in a position where two board members or three in the case of of some of the sequencing stuff would be running against another currently seated board member and i um considered that in the current community atmosphere of dissension that one of the last things i wanted to see was board members running against each other instead of board members who were totally focused on the area that they the district that they would represent if they chose to run and would be elected that they would be
048running against someone not currently on the board and i thought that considering the current climate politically and that that would be [Music] the best outcome because having board members run against each other i don't see that as a very positive thing in this community right now then if you take a look at what the orange map do and allow board members to decide to either run or not against another community member rather than a sitting board member that that would lower the temperature in this community and that if people wanted to run against someone that was currently on the board that's fine we're you know where that's what we expect uh sitting board members but the divisiveness that running against another board member would create was not something that i that i um thought would
049be good for the board sir i want sir you are interrupting a board member's conversation about all right then you you a reason that you want to act like you don't know how a board meeting runs you don't know how to behave in public is that your reason i am finding your uh acrimonious comments very disruptive and it's not facilitating the board meeting at all dr kaiser may i continue yes please do all day long i asked if i could continue yes she did she's trying to finish her comments [Music] the next part of the consideration for what to do tonight i go back and look at some of our criteria from the beginning and i look at [Music] the the way the orange maps configure the neighborhoods the big blocks um there's a difference
050between orange a and orange b and um i think that's something that we need to discuss in depth um but i i do not believe that there's any disadvantage to the protected class by supporting orange a or orange b i do believe that having this process begin with a level playing field and that that just means the opportunity is there if a board member chooses to run to run without running against a fellow board member and so i don't see any downside to the orange maps i do see a downside to continuing disruptive [Music] behaviors both online and in person which i believe would be the result of approving the green map now you go back to what would happen with the green map may i speak to that for a moment i just i
051want to touch on that premise because um i mean it took a year so but you guys thought out to me eventually we all ran in the same election i don't see that as any kind of a problem i mean you run against somebody and if you win they're not then the other person isn't there anymore to be grumpy about about it i don't think again i remind you this is not a town hall that's not the law go ahead matt i mean miss linda i'm i i i'm not going to debate you on that issue you and i have different opinions i respect your service and i respect your opinion and i you know i don't wish to make it a divisive issue that's that's my reason is to avoid what we're seeing but
052we have an adversarial political system it's i mean it's the nature of the system we're in okay the no that that's okay the um if you look at the sequencing issue of the green map it doesn't allow for a level start and i don't see why that isn't important to us level start means there's one board member in each district no it doesn't a level start means we all have a chance to run a campaign and win election and that's true in any map we have um okay my opinion is that the level playing field is one member per district to begin this process after this election year then it you know it's it's free and open and and um there wouldn't be hopes that would be free and open the whole time i'm sorry
053what oh okay now i'm i'm pretty much um i think you understand my position um i believe that um regardless of what the sequencing does that the orange map both a and b with the change of some of the student count in a going to b or is it b going to a is important for us to um [Music] consider in getting these districts the other thing that i that i believe people don't understand about at least how i feel is we're a chico unified school district it doesn't matter what district we get elected from once we're elected we represent every student in the district from every district and so in my mind i want to separate the two processes one's political and i don't like it i've never liked politics i don't like running
054for election i don't like campaigning but um sir you are being incredibly rude then why don't you leave point of order sir we are not going to get to the vote okay but i'm not asking you to leave i'm asking you to be quiet so we can debate we can get to the boat so we can all get out of here when you create an atmosphere of harassment you are interfering with the process of us taking a vote this is the discussion before the vote and clarifying the rationale that each board member has is important uh did you have anything else either you wanted to add doctor cuz no just to point out that the orange maps do give a much clearer picture of if you look um at the you know the the drawings
055on the green map there um they don't as easily identify what our criteria were and i believe the the orange maps do and i'm ready all right thank you yes matt that last point that you just made madame robinson um it's not entirely uh our fault or anyone's fault i mean it's actually let me rephrase that it's actually your fault sorry to throw a log on whatever fire there is today but you you voted to eliminate the blue map and the purple map right and so so you can't complain that you can't lay any complaint that the green map doesn't accurately represent you know i think maybe it was neighborhoods you were alluding to um hey i mean the blue map did a great job with that but it was the wrong color it wasn't
056orange and so it got eliminated and the same thing happened to the purple map i as some of you might remember had an opportunity to study abroad as a foreign exchange student to israel when i was there i took a couple of classes on middle eastern politics and history and middle eastern politics in history are full of hardball politics politics where they don't have things like the constitution they don't have things like like bodies of law that govern all of their lives that they honor and adhere to as as individuals what they value historically okay and it'd be great if this could change but is who's the most powerful person who has the most guns the most troops who controls this place and that's what they play pay homage to not the law the orange
057maps in this situation are closer to that than anything else that's ever been considered than any other map because the orange maps care about the current office holders more than they care about where the best place is to draw a line what's the best way to organize the city [Applause] that's my reason why the green map as mr lando is saying is objectively the best choice for democracy rob murray who each and every one of us knows is a very able-bodied demographer he came up with three good maps for this process and he said right up here a month ago that he had no idea when he drew those maps where anyone lived after all that was the marching orders that he had been preliminarily given two years ago was to not take that into
058consideration or make it a very last bottom priority okay he didn't even know where we lived when he made those maps blue purple and green only one of those remains and it's the green one and that's what makes it the best it was objectively created it was democratic you ask any global citizen which of these two options today if you asked it on this very day march 2nd 2022 98 of them would say the green map is better if you appraise some of the facts why because it has one thing it can brag about that the others do not have and that is that the guy who put it together was completely blind to the stakeholders the the existing current stakeholders and he was doing something that was just best for the people and best
059for the democratic process so that's my argument for the green map all right so uh i would like to uh dr kaiser yes may i respond yes mr tennis do you remember stating that your sole purpose was to make sure that there were turnovers in the board and that you would do anything you could to make sure that the current board was not reelected by utilizing one of the other maps i do not remember making that statement all right so i want to go back to the legal reason that we had to do this and that we were threatened with being sued if we didn't and that is the california voting rights act recognizes when a recognized minority group loses the ability to influence an election and they only needed one case historically to prove
060that and it did happen in chico not i don't believe in the actual board but in a city election where an hispanic candidate failed to get votes in the open everybody votes the same but in the areas where there was more hispanic living she got more votes so to me the critical thing with this is that when i look at the orange maps and the 18 plus hispanic population which means they could vote they're pretty balanced whereas the green gives more to just one area the there are three areas on the orange maps where potentially an hispanic candidate with the voting age population could gain uh influence could be elected and that was the whole purpose of the voting right act um we did say we got comments from our from the population at large
061that neighborhoods were very important chico has always recognized real significant neighborhood influence and those got strengthened in the orange maps the avenues have been a long time organized group and that was another neighborhood the mountain communities got recognized as being very distinctive communities they live in very different circumstances than most people in the city limits live in and so those were the things that i saw as very attractive um the context of this is on a lot of other things they're relatively equal but those were the two things that i thought were particularly of interest so the neighborhoods that were recognized were the barber neighborhood the chapmantown neighborhood downtown south campus the avenues and cal park so the effort was to try to recognize those neighborhoods and then of course recognize the mountain communities so
062i'm in favor of either of the orange maps but probably orange b the most because it did bring more school popular populations into that area a lot of comments we have gotten about the size of the area the size does not matter at all it's literally population that is the key factor they have to be by law relatively equal and that was done so all of these maps were drawn by the same demographer group and they're all legally meeting the qualifications demanded by the california voting rights act so um yes i just wanted to address the point you made about um having many uh trusty areas with a high hispanic latino population because my understanding was that the point was simply to get the highest concentration in one so that it would be more likely
063to win a single seed which is why i'm looking at green again because it has that one that just happens to have the highest number i think we really need to consider that as again the whole reason we're in this mess in the first place it's one percentage point among the voting age yeah it's 22.7 no the voting age yes i understand that 21.7 21.7 and the other one the green is 22.7 but one is bigger than the other yes by one percentage point all right so uh are there any other are there any other comments that any board member wants to make well do we want to call for the vote then on the motion the motion is to vote for the green map okay do you want to call for the vote madam
064president you call for the vote so and i'll begin with a roll call all right so the vote's been called for on that motion and all right robinson this is on the motion yes to marine map approve green robinson no okay lando i okay kaiser no tennis eye okay okay so we have to by law have three yeses to pass any ballot um so do we want to have more discussion can i get a clarifying question there um since mr gant is here is it we have to have three yeses or do we have to have a two versus one with at least a quorum of three present yeah three yeses you need a majority of the board a form of the board in favor of any vote thank you and so uh at two
065to two the vote has failed yes so the vote is final and it has failed thank you yes okay i have a comment all right that i i um the last meeting ms dalby voted in favor of the green map i'm going to read from an email that i have here from keaton dently that i'm happy to forward to you that i just received um from who keaton dentale who's the gentleman from the election officer point of order i'm sorry yes um and i mean no disrespect but we in order to have this kind of discussion we need to be inside of motion so if someone wants to pop it on the table just so we can do this that would be great um i'd like to well i'm going to make a motion similar
066to one i already made um and i think that this email here provides a basis for for doing it are you okay that would be so make the motion and then we'll discuss it absolutely um and maybe one of the one of you didn't second earlier but maybe you'll you'll change your mind but i think that we're okay putting this decision off for another week um i'm looking at verbiage from the elections office in butte county seems to indicate we have easily enough wiggle room to put this decision off we're all going to be here anyway we don't have to make a decision right now so you want to actually state your motion so i move that we put this decision off for one more week i will second that okay so it's got a
067second okay by way of discussion if i may yes go ahead this deadline date for the county committee to adopt the resolution is july 6th while our office would greatly appreciate that the maps are done sooner rather than later it would appear from our point of view that the school district does still have some wiggle room on the time line for adopting the maps pending the process at the county committee level hope this provides some clarity keaton dentally i apologize for the lateness of this communication but i when i found out that ms dalby knowing that she had supported the green map i wanted to get an answer to this question and so i got it i feel like we should just put this off i know it's not what we want to do but
068okay so we have a motion and a second that's information that is uh reinforcing the motion uh is there any other discussion yes tom yes um so it seems like we have to frankly i mean i'm a pragmatist that's why you guys don't like me about the mask mandates um but it seems like the only thing we can do here is to put it off because otherwise we're gonna sit here all day making motions about green orange and voting two to two so let's just i hate i hate booting it frankly i wish uh miss alba were here so we could do this but i also don't want to stay here until 10 o'clock voting two to two over and over again all right eileen did you yes madam president um i don't support the
069motion i do believe that with further discussion and consideration considering [Music] what our criteria are that we should be able to come to a decision this evening may i yes i mean there's a reason why deliberative bodies always have an odd number of people so this kind of situation doesn't happen it's we're locked we're going to stay locked i hear what you're saying but there is no super compelling reason it's easy it's better for the county it's kind to them and they're going to have a different meeting at a different time but that is not the end all be all i mean i don't see why we can't wait until we have a full five so we can actually have a vote that everyone feels like they're completely heard on miss robinson i believe it's
070up to you to call for a vote we have a motion on the floor i don't know if there's more vote more discussion that's what i was calling okay so uh the situation is we have input from the election office that they believe that it could be postponed that's not the county but still a critical input and the motion is to postpone until march the 9th and we have so i guess we call for the question robinson no lando i kaiser aye tennessee [Applause] okay so this decision has been postponed to march the ninth and i truly appreciate all you being here for your legal advice and perhaps we need to see if kings if they can be here also on the 9th so that is literally the only item on the agenda so this
071board meeting is closed you