Trustee Area Elections

Plumas County Committee on School District Organization

The Plumas Unified School District (PUSD), Plumas County Office of Education (PCOE), and Feather River College (FRC) have begun a process to transition their trustee areas from an at-large voting system to a by-trustee area voting system. Please note that adjusting trustee areas will NOT affect a student’s school of attendance.

Final Trustee Area Map adopted March 10, 2022

What are we doing?

The California Voting Right Act (CVRA) was enacted to implement the California constitutional guarantees of equal protection and the right to vote, ensuring that a influence of a protected class (class of voters who are members of a race, color, or language minority group) is not diluted. Any school district using at-large elections is vulnerable to challenge under the CVRA.

This process will transition the districts from the current at-large elections system to a by-trustee area elections system:

Current System (at-large hybrid) –

at large hybrid election graphic

Board members must reside within their trustee area
Registered voters within the District may vote for all seats on the Board

This process will transition to by-trustee area voting system:

by trustee area voting system graphic

Trustees must reside within specific trustee areas
Only voters residing within the specified trustee area may vote for that particular trustee

Criteria

The CVRA provides criteria for drawing trustee areas. The criteria are divided into required criteria (the MUSTs) and optional criteria (the SHOULDs):

Required items: balanced populations; no gerrymandering of boundaries; boundaries shall not result in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen to vote on account of race or color.
Optional items: Compactness; contiguity; observe communities of interest such as high school attendance areas, rural or urban populations, municipalities, social interests and more; visible features such as topography and geography, and major highways, waterways, etc.
Community input and participation is key at all stages

The FRC, PUSD, and PCOE have developed a more specific set of criteria to guide in drawing trustee areas. Specifically:

Population deviation from the ideal population must be under 5%

Effort is made to keep smaller census designated places intact (not split between trustee areas)
No islands in larger communities such as Portola, East Quincy, and Quincy
When possible, consider Plumas County’s Board of Supervisors boundaries
When possible, utilize roads as dividing lines
Effort is made to keep the FRC, PUSD, and PCOE trustee areas the same
Effort made to avoid splitting larger communities more than they are under current boundaries (e.g., East Quincy is split between two trustee areas currently, so an effort will be made to avoid splitting that community into three trustee areas)

Population deviation is defined as the trustee area with the highest population deviation from the ideal population (total population of the district divided by the number of trustee areas) plus the lowest population deviation. Keep in mind that the current population deviation (measure of population balance) is currently at 93.8%.

Timeline

The process requires the following meetings:

“Pre-Map” Hearings: 2 public hearings prior to preparing proposed by-trustee area maps
“Map Consideration” Hearings: 2 public hearings to consider proposed by-trustee area maps
Map Adoption Hearing: Public hearing before adopting final by-trustee area map