Measure F would change Modesto city charter on school elections

A first step in switching to by-area elections for Modesto City Schools is on the June 7 ballot, a move school district lawyers say is needed to comply with the California Voting Rights Act.

Measure F would eliminate wording in the Modesto city charter mandating at-large school board seats, leaving it up to the board to decide whether to elect members by areas and, if so, where to draw the lines.

Voters should know as they consider this measure, Modesto City Schools attorney Roman Muñoz said in an October presentation, that the district will likely be sued if the measure fails.

Muñoz spoke before an identical measure appeared on the November ballot, by mistake only going to voters living within the city limit of Modesto. The Modesto City Schools high school district sprawls outside the city limit, and all of the district’s voters need to vote on the measure.

The city clerk made the error, putting the city on the hook to pay for the do-over. Costs could hit $325,000 for the June balloting, compared with $5,781 the school district paid to send it to the polls in November.

Measure F asks voters to approve changing one sentence in the city charter. “The members of the Board of Education shall be elected at large from the territory within the boundaries of the school district or districts which are under the jurisdiction of the Board,” is how it reads now.

The proposed wording to replace it is: “The Board of Education shall select a method of election for its members, by resolution, including but not limited to trustee or at large, in accordance with Chapter 1, Part 4, Division1, Title 1 of the California Education Code, or any succeeding statute.”

The board will almost certainly choose to divide the district into seven equally populated areas, each electing one member to the board. The change is meant to make it easier for low-income and minority candidates to represent their communities.

A lack of board diversity, in ethnic makeup as well as address, became a rallying cry for the African American community as the board appointed a replacement member in February. The switch across Stanislaus County has been pressed by the Latino Community Roundtable.

Modesto is the last of Stanislaus County’s larger school districts to move toward a switch. Ceres Unified and Oakdale Unified have used by-area seats for years. Turlock Unified had its first by-area elections in 2013.

Over the past three years, districts in Hughson, Waterford, Denair, Salida, Patterson and elsewhere have changed to elections by area. Even the small Chatom district has divided, creating five areas of roughly 350 voters each. Modesto City Schools had 115,793 voters as of the November election, which pencils out to 16,542 voters each for seven trustee areas.

The city of Modesto fought and lost the first of many lawsuits alleging one voting group was disenfranchised by at-large elections, agreeing to the split and paying $3 million as part of a settlement reached in 2007.

Since then, no school district has won any similar lawsuit, and the legal and settlement costs can be very high, Muñoz said.

An electoral change for Modesto City Schools would be complicated by the very different territory covered by its elementary and high school districts. Modesto is technically two distinct districts with a common administration, one of only five such combined districts in the state as of 2012. It’s elementary district is tucked within the territory of the high school district, which served seven other elementary districts in Salida, Empire and north Modesto.

But none of those complexities are part of Measure F, which only would change the charter to allow those discussions.

This story was originally published May 28, 2016 at 5:01 PM with the headline "Measure F would change Modesto city charter on school elections."