Santa Rosa school board poised to overhaul its election system

Santa Rosa City Schools board members are scheduled to approve new trustee boundaries today, doing away with the districtwide elections system that critics argue has disenfranchised Latino voters.

The school board last month postponed its vote on the boundaries, giving demographers time to take public input and draft a fourth map proposal. While some of the initial maps use highways 101 and 12 as borders and divide the west side into three separate districts, including one covering the heavily Latino Roseland neighborhood, the latest proposal creates a core downtown district, stretching from Fulton Road to Bryden Lane and Third Street to Guerneville Road.

The meeting will be held at 6 p.m. at the Santa Rosa City Hall’s Council Chambers.

School board members decided in August to scrap at-large elections in favor of district contests that would allow voters to cast ballots by geographic area. The move came weeks after Malibu attorney Kevin Shenkman threatened to sue the district and city of Santa Rosa on claims both were disenfranchising Latino voters and violating the California Voting Rights Act of 2001.

-Eloísa Ruano González