Placentia-Yorba Linda school trustees set criteria for district voting areas for 2018 election ballot

Ten criteria have been adopted to guide the development of five trustee areas to be ready for the election of board members in the Placentia-Yorba Linda school district in November 2018.

Starting with the 2018 and 2020 election cycles, the district's nearly 90,000 registered voters will select one trustee to represent their voting area, rather than voting on each of the trustee positions open on a district-wide, at-large basis.

For example, two trustee positions will be on the 2018 ballot and three on the 2020 ballot,

so only voters in two trustee areas will vote for board members in 2018 and only voters in the three other trustee areas will vote for board members in 2020.

Candidates must reside in the trustee area they seek to represent and only voters residing in each trustee area can vote for a board member to represent the area. Trustee areas must be equal in population, with only a less-than-10 percent deviation allowed under federal law.

Trustee positions on the 2018 ballot are now held by Carrie Buck, elected in 2010, and Karin Freeman, serving since 1989. The 2020 ballot will list slots now held by Judi Carmona, Carol Downey and Eric Padget, serving since 2010, 2000 and 2008, respectively.

Most of the criteria adopted earlier this month by a unanimous board vote for establishing trustee areas contain such language as “insofar as practical,” “to the extent possible,” “as much as possible” and “as possible given the other criteria set forth herein.”

That's because the different standards might conflict with each other. For example, one criterion is trustee areas “shall attempt to avoid head-to head contests” between the incumbents, while another calls for the areas to “respect communities of interests....”

Other criteria include establishing areas of contiguous territory in a compact form, considering jurisdictional boundaries and observing topography and geography, including such man-made features as freeways, highways and major streets.

Another criterion: “area borders shall consider school attendance zone boundaries, with emphasis on having multiple trustees representing each district high school attendance area....”

And most interestingly, “area borders shall consider historic, pre-unification school district boundaries...with emphasis on having multiple trustees representing each of those former boundaries, to respect unification....”

Buck, Carmona, Freeman and Padget live in Yorba Linda and Downey in Placentia. Only trustee from another city was Bob Harkness from Anaheim in the 1960s.

Registered voters for the district's 2016 election included 42,512 in Yorba Linda; 26,646 in Placentia; 10,898 in Anaheim; 6,428 in Fullerton; 644 in Brea; and 2,148 in county territory.

At least two trustee area maps will be posted on the district website Oct. 3. Public hearings on the suggested boundaries will be held at the regular board meetings Oct. 10 and Nov. 7.