With less than two weeks left before Dec. 1—when the Long Beach Unified School District (LBUSD) Board of Education wants to decide on a new district map—the board still expressed concern during its Wednesday, Nov. 17, meeting about receiving little community feedback.
The board has been discussing redistricting since September, after official 2020 census data came out showing population imbalances among the district’s five board representation areas. According to federal law under the 1965 Voting Rights Act, each area must have the same voting population within a 10% margin and the population variance is currently 14%.
LBUSD drew up three potential new area maps to balance out the population of more than half a million residents while attempting to preserve majority Latinx voting blocks in three of its areas.
However, according to Assistant Director of Equity James Suarez, LBUSD has received 113 responses from those residents about what they like or don’t like about the maps—only 29 more than when the board reviewed that data two weeks ago.
Chief Business and Financial Officer Yumi Takahashi, who is managing the redistricting, said LBUSD will be adding a population density map to its redistricting webpage to help the community understand why Area 5 is geographically bigger than Area 3, since that was one of the questions it received from the public.
Areas 1, 2 and 3—with more multifamily homes—are more densely populated than areas 4 and 5 that have more single-family homes, Takahashi added.
Justin Grayson, chief communications and community engagement officer, said LBUSD has mailed informational flyers to 40,000 households to solicit feedback, in addition to soliciting through social media posts and attending community events.
Nevertheless, Board President Juan Benitez expressed concern that most of the 113 public comments LBUSD received were in English with only one in Spanish. He urged LBUSD to increase direct community engagement efforts, especially for those who don’t have access to LBUSD’s website.
Benitez also said LBUSD should do more to instruct the public about how they should be reading the three map options, such as looking at how voting populations and ethnic subgroups change among the three.
“Folks don’t know what we’re trying to get at with the maps,” he said.
The public comments LBUSD has received so far through its website revolve around keeping communities together, Suarez said. They include keeping Signal Hill in one area rather than splitting it into two—which the City of Signal Hill itself also expressed support for, Suarez said—and keeping together the neighborhoods of California Heights, Los Cerritos and Bixby Knolls.
Signal Hill is currently all in Area 4 but would be divided in two of the new map scenarios, Takahashi said. Only Map 2 keeps all of Signal Hill in Area 4.
Board Member Doug Otto, representing Area 4, said he personally hasn’t received much other public feedback on redistricting. While the board is concerned with fair and balanced redistricting, the public may be more interested in how it affects them, he said.
“People who are interested in redistricting are primarily interested in how it affects their kids,” Otto said.
Board area changes do not affect which school children attend, only which board member represents the area.
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