Glendale school board reviews five options in redistricting effort

Later this month, the Glendale school board plans to vote on which voting district map they would like to adopt out of several drafts they considered Tuesday as they switch from an at-large voting system to a district-based one.

Four of the maps were created by National Demographics Corp. earlier this year for the board and residents to consider in a change Glendale Unified was required to make as part of a settlement agreement after the district was sued for allegedly violating the California Voting Rights Act.

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A total of 45 residents attended four community meetings between March 10 and 17 to vote on the four maps.

A fifth map was created after National Demographics received feedback from local residents during the meetings, said Justin Levitt, vice president of the company.

At the meetings, residents were given three blue stickers, which they could place on either different maps they preferred or all of them on one map if that was their top choice.

Map A received 67 1/2 stickers, while Map D got 41 1/2 stickers, according to a report.

Maps B and C received 28 and 10 stickers, respectively.

However, Map D, with the second highest number of stickers, became the most “polarizing�, Levitt said, because 16 people commented that it was the “worst� map, while four people said maps A and C were the worst and two people wrote the same about Map B.

Map D draws a voting line down Pennsylvania Avenue to separate La Crescenta, potentially allowing for two people living in La Crescenta to be elected to the school board.

Board member Nayiri Nahabedian said she didn’t like the idea of La Crescenta being split, and preferred maps A and B, where La Crescenta would encompass one district. Board member Greg Krikorian favored that idea as well, and said he liked maps A and C.

The new voting districts generally follow school-attendance zones, but in some cases, the attendance zones are split so it could potentially leave more than one board member elected from a district, and two or three members would represent a single school.

Currently, because the board members are elected regardless of where they live in Glendale, they each essentially represent all 30 schools. But under the change, which will begin with the April 2017 election, board members will be elected according to the district in which they live.

Some current board members have raised concerns that some newly elected members might concentrate on the schools located in their district.

“I’m really worried about the unintended consequences of pitting schools against each other,� said board member Christine Walters.

For Armina Gharpetian, board president, she preferred map D because it splits La Crescenta and draws two districts from the north part of Glendale down to the northwest portion of the city, which borders Burbank and to the southeast part of the city.

“I just don’t want us to be ‘The North board member’ and ‘the South board member.’ It’s just that notion, I don’t like that,� Gharpetian said. “If I have at least two board members representing north to south, you know what, for me, that’s a better option.�

Board members will hold their last public hearing on the proposed maps during a meeting on April 19 when they are also expected to select the final map.

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Kelly Corrigan, [email protected]

Twitter: @kellymcorrigan