By Mike Hazlip—
The City of Citrus Heights is looking to gain at least one seat at the table on San Juan Unified School District’s school board, a first in almost two decades.
Citrus Heights council members voted unanimously Thursday night to adopt a resolution supporting SJUSD transitioning from its current “at-large” process to “by-trustee-area” elections. The city’s resolution also advocates for adding two more members to the current five-member school district board, bringing the total to seven board members.
The resolution officially puts the city behind a process that will change how school board members are elected. If adopted, five or seven trustee areas will be created within the San Juan Unified School District’s boundaries, and voters from each area will select one resident from their area to represent them on the school board. Currently, SJUSD school board members are elected on an at-large basis where voters from the entire district vote for all members on the board.
The school district already announced an intent to move towards “by-trustee-area” elections last year, but the effort was postponed due to the pandemic. With elections by area, Citrus Heights would likely stand to get one or two seats on the board.
Residents supporting the addition of two new seats have formed the San Juan Community Action Network. The group hopes to persuade the current school board to increase the number of seats from five to seven, helping ensure representation from Citrus Heights and Arden Arcade areas.
“The SJUSD has for decades been allowed to have no representation on their school board, both for Citrus Heights and for the West Arden Arcade area,” one member of the public told the City Council on Thursday. “For the sake of basic democracy, support this resolution and have a seven member SJUSD school board for Citrus Heights to finally be represented.”
During the meeting, council members each expressed support for a seven-member school board, which advocates have billed as “neighborhood elections.”
“It’s really shocking to me that there’s nobody from Citrus Heights on the San Juan Unified School District board when 25% of the people in the district live in Citrus Heights,” Councilman Bret Daniels said. “I’m just blown away, and it’s been that way for almost 20 years. That needs to change, and certainly one of the ways that would change is by district.”
Daniels also said “by-trustee-area” elections will make it less costly and time-intensive for candidates to reach voters in their specific area, rather than each candidate being required to reach all voters across the entire school district.
Vice Mayor Porsche Middleton said school closures due to the pandemic highlighted the need for better representation for schools in Citrus Heights at the school board level.
“The pandemic laid bare the disparities between our youth, and our kids. Lack of food, lack of internet, and the struggles,” Middleton said. And I feel like if we had a representative in our district representing the city of Citrus Heights we would have had better interaction with our board, and better outcomes.”
According to the wording of the resolution passed on Thursday, “election of individual trustees by the voters of each trustee area will empower neighborhoods and diverse communities to elect local representatives of their choice, will enable candidates to be competitive without fundraising the prohibitively large sums needed to campaign across the entire district, and will ensure representation of the values of Citrus Heights voters and the needs of its students will always have an accountable representative on the district board.”
The resolution also requests that review of any five-trustee maps be withheld “until it can be considered in tandem with a seven-trustee option.”
The school board has public hearings planned for July 1, 13, and 27, which will be held in-person at the district’s office at 3738 Walnut Ave. in Carmichael. The meeting on July 1 is a pre-map hearing, where advocates hope to be able to convince the board to consider drafting seven-member district maps. Maps will then be drafted and presented for review at the July 13 meeting.
More information about the transition to “by-trustee-area” elections is available at sanjuan.edu.
