001foreign good evening everyone and welcome to the um special meeting for september 1st of chico unified school district board of education if you would join me in the pledge of allegiance to the flag please 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 um do we have any announcements dr kaiser excuse me my family welcome it welcomes a new member at 1 48 this morning and that is graceland violet and she and she's beautiful i've seen a picture native american yes she's gorgeous any other announcements oh yeah the next one is mine thank you um we have with us tonight for the first time jessica hunt 13th district pta representative jessica
002if you um wouldn't mind uh stepping to the podium so that i can embarrass you by officially introducing you thank you and welcome and could you let us know how you communicate what goes on here tonight back with our very valuable 13th district pta is it fine uh it should be okay yes um so we have a monthly meeting towards the end of the month we are in the process of switching out that meeting because our district meeting actually meets the same night as the third week meeting of yours so we're going to change that so then at that meeting at the end of the month i will report to them what is discussed um we'll also get a copy of the uh upcoming meetings and stuff like that so that if anybody on our
003board or any of our pta members want to weigh in on something they'll have that information um so that we can be prepared if we need to speak at the meeting thank you and welcome any other announcement any any other announcements okay then we'll move into our consent calendar item number three there's only one item does anyone wish to um pull or speak well not pull but speak to this item okay hearing none i am ready for a motion of the approval of the content calendar second thank you there's been a motion and a second um [Music] any further discussion board okay all those in favor by name dolby aye kaiser i landed robinson aye thank you and um mr tennis is absent this evening yes i did want to let everyone know the public
004and the board that mr tennis is involved in the water board meeting tonight and it is expected to go late so it was a conflict yes we're all um we're all hoping that the water board issues are uh getting squared away and we appreciate mr tennis's service on the on the water board thank you just a clarification it's the butte county water commission meeting not the board okay board our discussion action calendar tonight is going to be we'll be opening a public hearing at some point during the after the presentation we have with us tonight our representatives that are going to be introducing our trustee area establishment process um dr uh okay yes superintendent staley thank you i just elevated you i would like to introduce jamie and jamie and rob are here tonight but
005i'll let jamie go ahead and make the introduction of the presentation thank you superintendents daily members of the board it is a pleasure to be here this is our first in-person board meeting and we're just thrilled as much as we've enjoyed zooming it's nice to see actual faces so it's nice to meet some new board members and see everyone here in person we are here tonight we have an agenda uh we're going to kick off the presentation um and hand it over to legal counsel to give you kind of a discussion of the california voter rights act from a legal perspective and then paul threw it back to rob and i i want to do a short introduction of our firm for the new board members um and talk about the services that we provide
006just to give an overview i've known some of you for quite some time there's some new faces we're going to review the cvra and timelining criteria i think moving forward with this process it's really important to look back at the work that was already been done and kind of the foundation that was laid kind of what brought us to this point here in the district review the initial draft trustee area maps and data that was compiled so that you kind of know what to expect as this process moves forward and then some summary and considerations before moving into the public hearing um so paul i will hand it over to you and just let me know when you want me to scoot a slide forward there's some information on the slides and then paul's going
007to speak in general thank you very much can you all hear me fine on on the zoom yes yes thank you so much uh and thank you uh board president robinson uh superintendent staley and members of the board uh le thank you for letting us speak this evening with regard to this ongoing process for the transition of the district from its system of what we call at large elections for board membership to to what is projected to become a by trustee area or district election system now um several board members of course were on the board when i presented at least two other times in the past on this topic there's also a memorandum that was drafted early on in the process and it is attorney-client privilege so i'm not going to um go into
008detail in a public meeting of the contents of that it was drafted at a time when there was a direct risk of litigation over this topic it is dated january 15 of of and it is available for those board members who have not had an opportunity to review that as part of the background and it can be made available to you um including the asylum board member to review just to get some of that background why we got here how we got here and why it's so important uh that the process continue uh suffice it to say that uh this this was moving forward with all due diligence when um when a little incident called covet decided to come along and uh as a result of that uh it was determined at the state level
009that holding the kinds of public hearings with the kind of public input that would be expected in this process would be unfeasible it would be unpractical there'd be many members of the public who really wouldn't be able to come in and give their point of view on how trustee areas should be developed and for that reason the opportunity to suspend the process was provided now that the district as many districts in the state if not most at this point have moved back to the option for in-person board meetings and the public can come in as as well as board members are available in person to hear from any stakeholders uh the idea is that the time has come when the process needs to be reinstituted as you'll probably hear from our forensic at king king's
010con consulting the um the other factor is that with the recent recently conducted census and the expectation of relevant census data for local agencies being issued here probably at the end of september if i understand the scheduling properly then the data necessary to draw the trustee areas in a legally compliant manner will be available and once that happens the district can move diligently to develop those trustee areas and be in place in time for the next election cycle that's really the key because in order to continue to stay on the right side of of our legal requirements and to make sure that we don't again become the target of potential litigants that are dissatisfied with the at-large system it's very important that the process proceed and be completed in time for those data maps and
011those trustee areas the projected trustee areas to be provided to the registrar of uh and implemented for the 2022 election and um of course i'll look to our consultants to correct me if i've made any miscues here in the process particularly regarding the technical uh data that they develop to support the district in getting this done getting it done right and making sure that it's going to be secure from any type of legal challenge so i think i'll leave it at that at this point other than just to again remind the board that we really were under a very real threat of litigation and that given the if i can say you know preference in the legislation and preference in the state for the development of by trustee or by district elections in order to
012guarantee the participation or the full participation of of every group a subgroup that exists within a locality or or within a within a jurisdiction um we were we were satisfied that this was the most um safe route to go that it was the least likely to lead to litigation and that of course in in engaging the consultants that we have my firm and working with the board were convinced that we would have a team together that would help you draw districts that would really be the most responsive to the public as they possibly could be and would serve you over the long term serve your community over the long term as you enter into this new 10-year census and into this this new system of voting for your public so with that i'm happy to
013to field any questions although i do want to reserve plenty of time for our consultants to give you the full rundown if you will on this process and where we go from here um ford do you have any questions of mr gantt before we excuse me move into our um the rest of our presentation okay thank you paul thank you it's always a pleasure and uh i will just kind of piggyback on what paul was mentioning you are not alone so nearly every district in california is moving to by trustee areas because of that litigation and it's been quite common over the last several years additionally um the census 2020 data you are required if you already have trustee areas to take that data and to revisit um you know your trusty areas that are
014already in place so it's quite common it's happening in most districts throughout the state um so i wanted to give you just a brief little introduction of our firm and our services it's really brief we do a lot for your district and we have all the way back since 2004 we've been providing services i'm from chico i grew up here i graduated from chico high go panthers um my family still lives here we have an office here we also have an office in sacramento because that's where the california department of ed and the office of public school construction offices are so we bounce back and forth so we have a lot of knowledge about your district the neighborhoods like i said i grew up riding my bike from henshaw all the way down to chico
015high so i think that gives us a unique perspective to kind of attack this this project with we provide capital facility funding services to your district we work really closely with your amazing facility team this facility is beautiful and you're awarded state funding for it right now the total sum of all the applications and i won't go through them all um in progress being progressed awarded or submitted or on the workload list is a little over 48 million dollars so you're doing an incredible job as a district of leveraging all of that good state funding that you have the opportunity to leverage to maximize your local constituents bond dollars i it's quite phenomenal not all districts in california are are working as diligently as you are to do that so kudos um your developer fee
016studies that's a bi-annual study that studies in progress and you'll see that coming to the board in the spring when the fee goes up in january and then any other funding so the cal shape the 841 funding for hvac and plumbing and we're providing support for is needed the fema money when covid hit basically anything to do with capital facility funding um you know that's that's the service that we provide for you in addition demographics and planning services so almost every year since 2004 we've provided an update to your demographic analysis and student housing report so that you have accurate enrollment projections by which shipperjack that's going to be critical in this year because of the universal tk rollout so you'll see us back again in the spring to present those projections and talk about
017the impact to your facilities and because of that new program also boundary analysis and adjustments we helped kind of with the algae process the last time facilitating the meetings and shrinking the boundary at shasta which is necessary to kind of balance enrollments tonight we're here to talk about the california voter rights act and then we offer other services on demand as we get calls from the facility department or the business department so that's just a kind of a short introduction to our firm we're all about relationships and we really value the relationship we have with you and we appreciate the opportunity to to help you with this process as well i'm going to introduce rob murray he is wonderful he's been with king consulting and working hand in hand with your district since uh for
018seven years now it's hard to believe it's been that long he um and i worked together to do this review review of the initial data and findings to determine if you did have what's called racially polarized voting in your district and we did find evidence i'm going to introduce rob let him present that he's going to talk a little bit about the history and then i'll jump up and give like a kind of a summary and conclusions and we'll build questions um before the public hearing thanks jamie and i'll just echo why jamie said that it's really wonderful to be here and to be in front of this district again but we know we did want to as jamie said go back and just revisit the process that we began going through last year and
019the first part of that uh before we even got into drawing maps was just an election or sorry an analysis of the election results and uh we won't go into a lot of the nitty-gritty details here but again we're looking at racially polarized voting being defined as a difference in the choice of candidates and electoral choices and this is straight from the elections code that are preferred by voters in a protected class versus the choice of candidates and electoral choices that are preferred by voters in the rest of the electorate so in plain language basically if members of a protected class are predominantly favoring a candidate that is not winning at large elections because the rest of the electorate is voting differently than that is an example of racially polarized voting and so what we
020see here this is uh no names involved but this is just one of the election results of a candidate that did not win a seat on the school board in a large election uh you see we did we looked at this for every election between 2004 and 2018 with every candidate who did not win a seat and we found multiple instances of this kind of pattern we're looking at the hispanic slash latinx voting populace as the protected class and so you see on the up and down way there the higher it goes the more that voting precinct has a makeup that is more predominantly made up of that protected class the further to the right you have this candidate's support and when you see in that shaded box that upper right part that's where that
021candidate is drawing more support than they did from the rest of the district from the precincts that have more of the protected class making up the voting population and you see in this one it just you really see that scatter of dots up there and this was not the only one that had that pattern and so given that uh the timeline did start with february 19th and the adoption of that resolution of intent and then we went into uh holding those initial public hearings so before you even put i would say pen to paper but in this case mouse to mouse pad to begin making a map you've got to get input from the public on what considerations the public believes are significant when you're making these trusty areas and you have by the elections
022code two separate instances where that input is solicited before you even come out with the draft maps so we did that in march and then after receiving that input worked through the back part of march on developing those initial maps which were presented on april 1st and of course by then we were already into feeling the at the time very new and staggering effects of life changing all around us due to covid and then by april 15th when we were due on the schedule to have the first public hearing on those draft maps instead pursuant to those executive orders from the governor the process was suspended and as it turns out was never picked up again and then as paul was mentioning we are now to the point the this this whole process was based
023on the 2010 census data because you have to use that full count whole uh decennial census data when you're doing these trustee areas and that was still the most recent one at the time now we've conducted the 2020 census and the census bureau has promised by september 30th to have the data packages sent out that local governments need to exist yell school boards and city councils county governments water boards i mean everyone that has elections by any kind of district to voting needs to adjust those boundaries every 10 years for the census and so there was a delay this year just the census bureau like many other organizations was not able to do its job as efficiently as it has in the past and some various other political delays but we are now set that
024september 30th is the date by which they have promised to have that data available so that lets us still come back into this process begin you know just recapping like we are tonight uh how we got here and what we have previously done and again begin soliciting that public input uh because again this will be different data than we looked at last time and there'll be some different voices i hope in the room and we might uh wind up having a slightly different version of priorities than what we had the last time but i will be getting into some of that so we discussed the criteria that should go into these maps at the public meeting and we kind of separate these into the ironclad legal requirements and these were up on some of the
025slides that were up while paul gantt was speaking but a couple of the big ones each trustee area has to represent approximately the same number of people and so you take the whole district population in their case divided by five and then you get a plus or minus five percent of that but approximately equal populations in each trustee area and again so based on 2010 we had that range of 20 000 385 to 22 508 so you you get some play because it's all it's difficult enough to stick within that range when you're trying to meet a lot of other considerations but that's one that you cannot ever get away from we also look at honoring the california and federal voting rights acts we are looking at geographic concentrations of the protected class and in
026which case again we are looking at the hispanic and latinx population in chico and i will show you a map in a minute that again using the 2010 data did show a significant enough concentration that we wanted to work to keep that concentration from being split between multiple trustee areas so that their vote could go towards the candidate that that protected class might prefer so those were the legal requirements and then with the community input what wound up coming out of the mix last time around uh was a lot of discussion uh on kind of two different aspects of looking at high school boundaries as a major guidepost for building trustee areas there was some preference for trustee areas that were within one high school boundary or the other and then there was also a
027lot of vocalization four trustee areas that spanned both high schools so that each trustee had territory that was in both of the high schools and then we also had some input about the very strong neighborhood identification that you have in the city of chico and that some of these neighborhoods should not be split between trustee areas as people in that neighborhood represent what is called a community of interest who would have again common interests in their voting for school board members and then on top of all of that again you still want to uh try to keep things as contiguous as possible uh not have things that just look like they are gerrymandered and then the board also uh brought up the point along with some members of the public to keep an eye on
028socio-economic data so not necessarily as something to draw around but to look at the maps that were developed and see how they grade out when you apply some of that data to them so that was what we came into the initial map meeting with so this is that map i mentioned the area outlined in black there are the areas of the district where you can notice a concentrated population of the protected class of hispanics latinx residents and so that area we made sure was never split between multiple trustee areas so that was the community input process and then we got to the point where we presented a set of three initial maps to the board and to the community and so we just opted for a color coding system so that there was no kind
029of preference of numbers or letters signifying a rank but this was just a blue map a green map and a purple map and these corresponded broadly to those main criteria that had come out of the community input so you had a map that as much as possible tried to put the trustee areas entirely within one high school boundary of the other you had kind of the inverse approach where you had trustee areas that would be incorporating territory that was in both high schools and then you really looked at the neighborhoods and the ones that were called out by names were chapmantown south campus and the avenues and i believe there was one other but thank you and yeah so those four neighborhoods were kept in focus on the purple map and so again those were
030presented on april 1st they were up on the district website we have that capability uh ready to go again so that the public can especially now that i think a lot more people are used to engaging with these processes via remote means have some people checking out what's being put up on the district website being able to provide input and feedback but again no revised maps were produced the way the process was intended to go from this point on would be to have a hearing on these initial maps gather more public input and then almost certainly come back with some combination of tweaks and variations on these initial maps or even an entirely new map if some people brought up some points that they felt like none of the maps were addressing very well but
031again before we got to that point uh we did not go any further in the overall process so we're not going to go into all of the detail but just a quick look so these were the maps that were developed last time so this is your blue map and you see especially on the inset zoom out to the whole district uh it's not a perfect fit with the high school boundary just because the numbers again just don't quite let you do that but in general you had two trustee areas that were in the pv boundary and three trustee areas that were entirely or almost entirely in the chico high boundary and then with the green map again as much as possible you had trustee areas that had significant territory in both boundaries again just keeping
032between the need to keep the protected class concentration within one area the need for population balance and the need to keep things reasonably compact we had a couple of areas that were definitely more in one than the other but we thought that this as an initial map meant that community input and that desire from the community to see an option that reflected that and then the last map that was presented at the time the purple map uh kept the avenues entirely in one trusty area and the other three named neighborhoods within another of the trustee areas and just provided a again very distinct look from the other two maps and so again video definitely not going to go over all the numbers in this but this is the information that was presented last time an
033accompaniment to the maps and what's highlighted here is the verification that we're meeting that straight legal requirement so you can see the population that resided in each area then we also look at that 2010 population broken down by ethnicity just to get a sense and again it's not necessarily that you want that balance because again part of this is that we are making sure a concentration of a protected class by race and ethnicity is kept together so you will see some variation particularly in the percent latino latinx hispanic column and then we also at the time were looking at the voting age population because you have the general population and the voting age and just to make sure that you're not seeing major discrepancies and that's especially it was restoring the process with brand new
034census data what that is really helping you with is viability of these for a 10-year life cycle and that do you have do you seem to have a lot of the over 18 versus general population that might be moving a different directions then the socioeconomic analysis that was requested by the district uh we at least started off looking at what at the time was the most recently available household income data from the census and uh from the district enrollment standpoint as far as students who lived in that the percent who qualified for the free and reduced price meals program as it was at the time and so that again uh not going into the numbers here but just an example of the information that was provided to accompany the maps in that initial presentation and
035then there was also some interest in seeing the actual school composition of what kind of what schools might feel they were represented by certain trustee areas so again lots of numbers on this but what we're really looking at is the percent of the students who live in that trustee area by what school they go to so in the elementary sometimes you see there might be a couple of schools that between them make up more than half of the enrollment uh like in that uh blue one there there's a you know just a couple of the schools that you would say are the predominant schools for that trustee area of course as we mentioned every time we do your dasher presentation you do have you are a district of choice you do give your families a
036lot of options so regardless of where the trustee areas are what really jumped out was you have every single school just about represented within every single trustee area in terms of where someone who lives in that trustee area is enrolling their children in school so i think jamie did you want to come up and speak to some of our considerations now from this point yes very well done rob um so i think we just want to kind of go over really quickly all that information we just gave you so paul kind of discussed the legal requirements we provided the empirical evidence of historical racially polarized voting and i will say that is easier to prove than to disprove so from a legal challenge perspective it's it's much easier to show that with uh historical voting
037data than not um though we've been over the overview of the process in 2020 prior to covet and paul feel free to jump in if i'm wrong about that um and the governor's emergency orders which kind of hit the pause button brought us where we are today we reviewed the criteria both the legal requirements and then the community input that was gathered and reviewed the maps and the data so just some considerations to mention or mention again you know you've got some new board members now that weren't a part of that previous process the new census data is coming out so it doesn't really make sense to kind of get that not even really time to get it done before that comes out so it makes sense to begin the process with that new census
038data and we're really hoping that with increased public meetings and increased in-person meetings that we can get even more community input and public input which is a critical to this process and now that you know well at least for the time being things seem to be relaxing a little bit that being said we don't know what the new delta variant what we're headed into but um safe to say i think that you know if at the board's purview we could move forward with the process as planned in the public hearing tonight and that is all that we have and we're happy to take uh questions from the board uh and and discuss this board member uh yes dr kaiser yeah so there's quite a bit of evidence especially uh along the south campus area not
039only with students being sent away to do online education in their back 65 percent at chico state in person classes but a tremendous amount of new construction that really concentrated uh students and literally just a long nord i mean it's it's rather dramatic so and then we have the impact of the paradise uh the fire that caused a lot of people to be forced out of that area and who moved into this area so how uh how dramatic are we expecting the changes to be do we have any indication any sort of i wish i mean we are data nerds so we cannot wait to get our hands on that data we are doing an appeal actually for paradise so we're working there as well and we we work in other districts in the area
040also orlando etc so we're aware of how those kids moved and where they moved and how many you actually got here how the families have relocated how they're rebuilding so all of that is part of your dasher which is why it's so wonderful that we provide all these different services is because of access kind of to all that information we have some anecdotal ideas about how it might look now but we just won't know until we get the census data and rob obviously wants to say something so yeah just butt in but yeah one other point is you brought up a lot of those recent very significant changes but keeping in mind that we were also looking at that census data from 2010 last time and just other development in the north and in the
041southeast that also occurred during that decade and in addition to those more recent kind of pressure points of movement of people so that just kind of builds on jamie's point that yes i've i have been eagerly waiting to see this i mean this is the best data we'll have had uh literally in a decade and we'll certainly be presenting to you what it appears to show uh once we have that look but i think what you said was is accurate that you know we will really have to see what it reflects from that period of volatility that of course coincided with the census being taken yeah well the other part of that is the advertising for the new housing on nord all states uh luxury you know it's appealing to a student body class that
042presumably wants higher living standards than the dorms very uh i mean a very blatant appeal yes absolutely we uh we're seeing a lot of that throughout the state actually kind of those luxury higher end you know we're not going to generate any kids type of places um but we work really closely like i said with your facility department we do what's called a student generation rate every year to determine from those newly constructed units how many kids are they generating for your district but like rob said it'll be interesting to see once we do that once we get our hands on that census count how all of these kind of demographic push and pull factors a global pandemic the fires you know how has that changed the demographic um profile personality if you will of
043your district um and we should know in very short order yeah okay thank you i i just pulled up the the schedule that we have for this beginning this process because i was concerned about the public outreach meetings um coming before we had the the census data but as i i can see from how the process develops that that's not going to be a problem because the issues of preference right will be um addressed after we begin the hearings on the draft map absolutely absolutely yes it really is i mean it's a lot like boundary change works for your schools you want to go to the community and find out what it what is important to you right um can we move this program absolutely not can we you know we look at things like
044their legal requirements for cvra and that are similar to boundary change for school like major roads transportation things like that that need to be considered so it's very similar in the way that you kind of gather data from the community critical part of the process develop the criteria and then use that criteria to develop some scenarios and then get the feedback on the scenarios in the community as well can also develop a scenario and bring it and present it to the board or use the maps that are on the website and i think there's some printed out here tonight to draw what they consider to be the boundary of their neighborhood because some for some people those boundaries are different um and then we analyze all of that and disseminate it um and then provide
045it with the initial draft scenarios so there's one of them there's two weeks between the first hearing on the first draft map that's november 3rd that that um oh no october 20th is a presentation of the first draft trustee area map so that's when we first get to see it but the first public hearing isn't until november 3rd and then another one november 17th november 24th for the uh basically the final wrap-up for the board to to um adopt the map just before winter break right so we are going to have to move quickly we'll be depending on 13th district pta getting the word out and getting information back to us [Music] i'm looking again because we we do have to get this to the registrar of voters by uh doesn't say seems like um
046sorry for interrupting uh ms robinson but if there are questions paul about the timeline and you know is that set in statute that they must adhere to a certain timeline or could that be extended or wrapped around the holidays what what is the date that they need to to have this prepared at this point um given that we don't necessarily have or we're not marching to the same tune if you will as we were before the uh before covet and before the emergency order came down uh the primary uh limitations are going to be uh that you have to have a certain period of time as you know jamie between meetings uh in order to allow proper public input and then ultimately you have to be watching the clock to make sure that we have
047time to get the data to the registrar voters uh insufficient time to implement those areas for the for the next election because so that that's really the parameters what if someone claims that the census data is flawed dramatically flawed because of the difficulty of reaching people in that context and a lot of people you know being very concerned about answering questions from quote unquote strangers what do you want to address that jamie i mean from a legal standpoint we're required to use the census def we are not allowed to use any other source to draw the boundaries um and i think what i would comment on that uh dr kaiser is that um there is uh there are things that are within the jurisdiction of your board and there are things that are not within
048the jurisdiction and um disputes about the accuracy of the census are are not within the school board's jurisdiction as as a lot of things involving public health and other things are not and sometimes you know members of the public may need to you know come come forward with concerns and they may need an explanation that that we are required to follow that census data unless something intervenes such as a court where to issue an injunction or something like that that was brought against the u.s census bureau or or other agency and we dr kaiser have as you know have a wealth of information about your student population which correlates to some degree to your general population and we've mapped all of your students in the district to do our spatial analysis to provide accurate projections
049and it's all confidential we sign a confidentiality agreement um but we can always determine if that you know once the data comes out how it correlates to your student population in those areas you know so we can kind of do some data validation uh if it would help the community have a better level of comfort uh interpreting the census data that we provide i think rob's gonna be very busy he is gonna be very busy he's gonna be chained to his desk this season of cdra so it looks as though we have three benchmarks to meet after the december 15 date that we have selected to approve our maps and and we have to get them to the county committee first which then takes it to the state board of education and then the state
050board of education approves what we've done that has to be 120 days after the trustee areas are established or the first election is 120 days after the state board of education approves it okay so we do need to move quickly so that we are in time to meet the november election um timelines yes yeah i have several questions remember dolby did you have a question i have a few um so uh going back to the study that's done on racially polarized voting um will that will that data be updated at all um absolutely okay and then so i had a wrong you can get it that's not my like burning question my burning question is if you all or somebody else studies that for the city council as well because i'd be interested since city
051council has moved towards district voting in the most recent election to see sort of uh the writing on the wall if it's if it is is effect it has is effective in this community for for um mitigating okay um any racialized racial poor as one does does that make sense it does make sense so the the racial pull sorry and i sh i miss about the racial polarized venting um is really based on historical voter records and that data so that won't necessarily be updated we did a 2004-2018 we could look at the 2020 election that's the only one right so we could include the 2020 election as far as the city goes um you know i'm not sure they i think they recently implemented those i'm not sure if they've had an election since
052they implemented their trusty areas if they have and we could certainly look at that to see if there are similarities in what they found in the population and and how they drew theirs yeah i mean rob do you want to speak to that can you no i i i can come speak to a on kind of a more general level because then the analysis does get a little more involved because then you're looking at and again i'm not as familiar with the city if it's five or seven but you have the number uh looking at separate elections uh with just within that area and the idea behind the cvra and the federal voting rights act is that those candidates supported by the protected class when they are voting within a smaller area uh getting in
053the case of chico usd where you really had that single concentration of the protected class that would now just be voting uh within an area where it makes up a much proportionably greater voice you would see less disparity between what the rest of the electorate just in whether that's trustee area number four or two or whichever one that is voted versus the protected class and then in the rest of the district where you don't have as much of a presence of the protected class of voters uh then we probably wouldn't be looking at those trustee areas as closely we'd really be looking at the one with the uh you know that was basically contains that protected class and if it's doing its job you should see a much closer alignment right between a successful election
054yeah but but not as much of a spread of that uh difference of the the precincts with the highest proportion of the class also voting in a way that differed the most from the rest of the electorate so but again you're really then shrinking the focus to just again essentially just one seats race rather than everyone who is running for the board so i'm not that gives any help to what you had asked yeah i guess just because i'm i i would like to see there be preliminary evidence that that the district lines that were drawn in this community for that purpose are doing what they were supposed to do if that makes sense yeah i think you know that was a public process in the trustee areas that they developed and adopted i certainly
055if there's been an election since that time well there was there was okay in 2020 we can analyze it's all public record i think we can access and analyze that um doing its job i mean i think ultimately the spirit of the cvra is not to give anyone kind of a leg up really it's just about these protected classes not having their votes diluted um by the the majority voters in the community um so it's not necessarily looking for a successful election as is it's doing its job i don't even know if i use the word successfully i just want to know that that it's doing its job to mitigate any of that and they stay based their trustees if they base their areas on historical voter records and then it should be it should
056be that's the key and that's what i want to know okay and then one other point that might be a little counter factual but another big part of the platform of the rationale for this is that as far as access for candidates to run is that campaigning within a single trustee area is more accessible and obtainable for some people who might be part of that protected class than having to campaign and try to build up votes throughout the entire district in an at-large election and so that's where you might see a candidate who was running who might not even have run under an at-large system kind of kind of conversely on this city council side of things and in a little bit this year with the school board election even we're seeing bigger chunks of
057money seeping into the campaigns and so um it is a concern everything that we're talking about is a concern as well as access accessibility to bigger funders um and and that kind of um bastardizing the entire the entire district election you know system i did have actually more questions i'm sorry i i'm sorry i know that was a question i forgot i had more questions like my brain's just going it's a little it's a lot going on it's a lot yes um when we're looking at the census data is there consideration taken um for renters versus homeowners um because that has had a significant shift since the campfire a lot of our renters were pushed out of their homes um uh pre-campfire because paradise folks that had the ability to buy homes were buying out
058those rental properties so as far as a requirement again we're really just looking at the total population but that could absolutely be a criterion i cannot speak with absolute certainty if that will be in the data package that we get but we can certainly again still look at the most previous american community survey data to get some kind of metric of uh the renter versus owner occupancy of units and like we did with the socioeconomic data last time around provide that as an accessory to any maps that are produced so that you can track how that looks across different options yeah if that's available and and easily accessible i think that that would be yeah the census does provide accounts of renters versus homeowners so if that's a criteria that you know is included and
059what we are to look at as we're developing these then a scenario that includes that and renters or homeowners each is a protected class then we can certainly look at that um as a clarifying and follow-up question to that because i think it's very important um for members of the public and the board to know uh that there are a host of factors that the community can look at but would it be accurate to say that we have to be cautious that the factors that are implemented do not cut against the requirement to in essence ensure the uh the voting strength of the protected population is not negatively impacted in other words you can look at a lot of different factors but they can't work against the the cvra's primary purpose which is to um
060promote the opportunity for those protected classes to have a voice in the elections thank you one of the the things that we had split out in the way of data the last time around was the um the income level of the uh the median income level of the different districts and i was surprised at how significant some of those differences were and so what in paul's caution to us i i want us to remember that again that when we're looking at this that we we take a look at those median income level disparities as well yeah yeah that was part of the analysis that we provided last time and it will continue to be you've got a unique situation with your media and household income because you're a college town so college students tend to
061have very low i know i did median incomes so it just kind of pulls everything down and then when you're looking you have to remember which potential priest you know trusty area you're looking at and take that into consideration if you see a very low one it could be highly populated with college students yes that was my next question actually because dr kaiser sort of i think i was asking or was close to asking about how csu chico students might skew this data because you know they are included and possibly included in the census but but maybe they don't vote in this area and so if they're not voting here if they're actually registered voters at in their home towns but they're being counted as part of the the you know do you understand what
062i'm saying absolutely i'll stop talking yeah it's okay don't stop talking i talk all the time i drive my husband crazy um the they're all very good questions um unfortunately we're stuck with the legal requirements so we can't the part part of that statute doesn't say only count the population of the registered voters in your town so it's just something that we're going to have to to consider you're going to have to consider when you're looking at the trustee areas and there's no way to split the population or kind of segregate out the the college students who aren't registered voters here in the county is there still a at least a qualifiable way to take it into consideration where we you know we would look at you know density of students versus you know i
063don't even know all registered voters by precinct i think it might give you an idea compared to the 100 percent count of population there over our brains think alike yes absolutely we can correlate the registered voter data to the 2020 account by age group actually or the voter registration doesn't come by age i don't think sorry we're talk sidebaring about what data is available yeah but i think this is a good uh just kind of indication of what this process is really about is hearing both now in person at this meeting and through the ways that the district is making it possible for people to provide input in between meetings but just so that again the factors that people believe should be taken into consideration again before i and jamie take the first step in
064actually making maps with this 2020 data the we'll have this list of things to just be considering and then to when we present those initial maps uh update all of the interested parties on you mentioned that this was important to you and here's what that looks like and then but then that we didn't get to this part the last time around but this time we will get to then have that really real follow-up of i like parts of this but i want to now really emphasize this data point with this and can we tweak this one can we make a new map that takes this criterion that didn't come up as much at first but obviously has become much more important since then and so i think this these kinds of conversations these questions are
065all great because it tells us the many kinds of things and of course uh i will do my best and jamie will do her best but finding a single map that perfectly balances every point is probably not going to happen so it will be a matter of finding the one that hits the most points and does the best job of balancing multiple interests in a way that a lot of people feel does a good job with the many ways that you can approach this one of the things that was a surprise to me in working with the voting analysis was that the college students actually are registered and do vote to a much higher degree than you imagine they would that was a surprise and the areas that have a lot of retired folks in
066them also they're yes they're retired but boy do they vote so yeah it um it was an an interesting look so i do want us to to take a look at that because the the who votes is a surprise i think and you know unfortunately uh we weren't able to bring back everything that we presented um you know the last go around every single data point but we will be looking at all of those same that same kind of data during this process any more questions board members yep um i'm a new board member uh so i know that our um protected class uh group that we're focusing on primarily here is our hispanic and latinx we do have a growing number not terribly significant i guess compared to that particular group of um of
067in our i'm just looking at our demographic information for chico unified of students who are identified as two or more races is there a threshold where we would consider an additional protected class to be taken into consideration and i'll paul feel free to jump in on this one but i think in this case uh especially when you get into the really detailed census data because again for the state department of education tracking where you just have that two or more category with the census that or more gets broken out so you have the two races and exactly which combination of races and three and four and five and i think at that point when you're breaking the data down to that fine of a level uh because i would imagine a lot of those groups
068might not consider that they uh would be a common protected class with the same voting interests as every other member of that if you just broaden all that up into two or more races so that that's where i'm looking at that from but uh where i thought you might have been going with that but when the 2020 data comes out if they're one that's one of the first things that we will look at again by legal requirement is that in addition to what was identified last time around confirming that the hispanic latinx protected class still demonstrates that geographic concentration to remain part of the process but if any other groups emerge so we'll certainly be looking to see if there are more but i think with the census data we would be looking at that
069people who identify across multiple races and ethnicities in those more particular combinations to see if anything might emerge and i don't know that there's necessarily a threshold but it that that's a really important term that he just said that i want you to keep in mind is that geographic concentration i'm having trouble with my words tonight i apologize uh with that so that it's really is there a protected class and are they geographically concentrated and could represent a majority of the votes or more a higher majority of the votes in our trustee area thank you for explaining that absolutely i have one more question sure um and it's a i guess a slightly uncomfortable elephant in the room question but our next election might not be as late as next november okay um and anybody
070can argue how likely or unlikely it is but as early as or i guess as late as may there could be a special election okay um would this need to be a process that's fast enough to to have those districts drawn for a special board election or would that be do you i mean do we have any idea i don't know that there's enough time and paul might be able to answer that better but there's a certain amount of time required in between each meetings i think this is our fastest timeline right now paul that we put together right you've got that 120 days um your first election has to be held more than 120 days so if you pull back from may january that would be january and i i'm not sure that the
071approval by the county committee and the state board of education uh there's no way it could get done between december 15th i mean you got chris even if we're all home for christmas because it's still covered i'm not sure that that's enough i i think the county committee may be a little more doable uh quite frankly when we get into the board of education they are generally going to approve these at their quarterly meetings you have to get on the agenda they're not terribly flexible about this um so so chances are that would be it would be a heavy lift to get that done by a special election and then this kind of segues into something that i can go ahead and speak to which is so in that case it sounds like there would
072be a very high chance that a special election in may would still be an at-large election just because the full process for transitioning to the trustee areas would not have been able to occur and then what happens with the trustee areas is that everyone who is elected through an at-large system serves out their term and so if they're uh so then so and then and so then just whenever a seat would be that a term would be up then uh at that point whichever election that is you would move where that seat would be elected by the trustee but only by the voters within that trustee area and if the can and if it worked out such that uh there were say two current of the at-large candidates who lived in a single area with
073an area that did not have an incumbent then you know there are procedures laid out for how that is dealt with but again every candidate who was elected at large even if that was someone who was elected in that special election would serve their full term uh their full term meaning the the term that they would would replace so let's say you know it's next november is when the term is up um three out of four of us term next term is up next november so um let's just say the whole board flipped and you know there's three terms that were up in november do the three replacements then they have to be at the at the like run again in the distinct districts in the november election next year thanks for clarifying okay if
074we're done with board questioning i'm going to open the public hearing for this issue and ask if there are any public comments we had none submitted we have no public comments coming in from our online viewers and we have no public comments coming forward here so i'm going to close the public hearing okay and if i'm not speaking out of turn i will just mention again that the district has a now i believe live uh web page up that has uh ability to uh just put in just written comments if you just want to write we also have maps available if people feel that it would be easier to draw on a map to communicate uh either a community of interests or even ideas for what trustee areas might look like that is all considered
075public input and we'll take that into consideration again once we have data and then next month can really begin uh in earnest looking at potential math options thank you so much thank you thank you and um just to remind everyone we will do this again at our september 15th meeting without the um the broader presentation uh just to give the opportunity for public input and uh yes do take advantage of the things that are online on our website and just to clarify we did send this information home to every family in the district and we will do so again and i can include some of the forms if people want just to make it easier for families to be aware and provide input thank you superintendents daily this erica did you have any oh okay
076um this is an information only um item uh and our next uh agenda item is to ask if any board member has um a topic that they would like to bring forward for consideration for a future agenda item ms dolby did you have a question hey i'm becoming increasingly concerned about our coveted cases in our schools and i'm trying to formulate in my head if there's any particular thing to actually try to try to agenda as i said i'm becoming increasingly uh concerned about the rising covet cases and quarantines in our schools but i i don't know that there's something to agenda per se um i don't know if um we're gonna have any more presentations from the staff or just you know updates that are a little bit more clarifying we can we can
077certainly provide an update we do have the dashboard that is up and running that i'm sure the board's aware of um but we you know certainly can talk about uh what we're seeing and what we're doing and how we're handling it uh i came just to this meeting from pleasant valley high school uh helping to make phone calls home so happy to share some of that information obviously i cannot do so here but i i recently went to write a to check on the availability of the quote unquote you know rapid tests and um wright a told me that the only place that they knew was getting uh they said at that point daily but apparently it isn't daily delivery of tests but it's the walgreens and they told me call that four o'clock in
078the afternoon on thursday and then we'll know how many tests we get so the tests are flying off the shelves literally but apparently have a very high false positive level so perhaps one of the things we can do is encourage people about where they might get a more accurate available test um and certainly it's impacting the entire community i mean we put we've pushed that information out to our families as well and happy to do so again i think that might be helpful okay we are going to go into um closed session um do we have any public comment about closed session we have no public comment um thank you okay we will um adjourn to renato journey we're um just going into closed not session foreign thank you the board met in closed session
079to consider agenda item 6.7 public employee appointment the board voted unanimously to appoint jacqueline krueger to the position of assistant superintendent business services no other action was taken thank you you