After more than two months of review, the Long Beach Unified School District (LBUSD) Board of Education unanimously approved a new area map on Wednesday, Dec. 1. The Long Beach City Council is scheduled to decide on Dec. 7 whether to approve the map.
If the council approves, the new map will be sent to the LA County Registrar/Recorder’s office to establish voting precincts for the next board elections on June 7, 2022.
The board-approved map changes boundary lines for each of LBUSD’s five board member representation areas based on 2020 census data finalized in September. According to federal law under the 1965 Voting Rights Act, each area must have the same voting population within a 10% margin.
However, census data revealed that the current variance among board representation areas is 14% due to population shifts over the past decade, especially between the least populous Area 3 in southwest Long Beach and most populous Area 5 covering LBUSD’s northwest portion.
LBUSD came up with three redistricting map options in October with consultant Cooperative Strategies and sought community feedback to assess which one to adopt.
The map does not reflect which LBUSD school a student attends, only the area each board member represents.
Yumi Takahashi, LBUSD finance director, said the new map boundary lines balance out populations in each area to within the allowable 10% margin—or about 103,700 in each area— while keeping communities of interest together as much as possible.
“Community feedback was the pillar of this process,” Takahashi said about board redistricting. LBUSD’s community-of-interest survey garnered 189 responses and a feedback survey about the three map scenarios on LBUSD’s website drew 122 responses, she added.
She said Map scenario 2 of the three best reflected community interests, especially keeping neighborhoods in the same area while reducing the population variance from 14% to 7.6%.
That map keeps Signal Hill together in Area 2—moving it from its previous Area 4—instead of splitting the city between Areas 2 and 4 as in the other two map scenarios. The Willow-Springs neighborhood also moves from Area 4 to Area 2 in the new map.
Map 2 also keeps together the neighborhoods of Bixby Knolls, California Heights and Los Cerritos, as per public feedback. And it keeps the Long Beach Cambodian community together, Takahashi said.
Other major changes include moving the Willmore and St. Mary’s neighborhoods from Area 2 to Area 3 in the new map, and moving the Los Altos South and Stearns Park neighborhoods from Area 5 to Area 4, Takahashi added.
Board Member Diana Craighead said having five fewer schools in her Area 5 as a result of the change “saddens” her because she liked representing them.
“There is a lot to be said for keeping neighborhoods together,” said Board Member Doug Otto, who represents Area 4, noting that he is losing Signal Hill to Area 2, represented by Board Member Erik Miller.
Otto also claimed that new voting maps—not only LBUSD’s but the new Long Beach City Council district map approved last month—spur people to move from place to place.
“All kinds of political things happen,” Otto said about redistricting.
LBUSD will submit the board-approved map to the Long Beach City Council on Thursday, Dec. 2, for consideration of approval on Dec. 7, Takahashi said. Board President Juan Benitez encouraged the city council to heed the board’s recommendation in its decision.
