Glendale school board agrees to plan for voting districts

Glendale Unified school board members voted unanimously, yet some said regretfully, to pass a resolution Tuesday night outlining guidelines for how new voting districts will be drawn in the district.

They were required to pass the resolution as part of a lawsuit settlement, although the majority of board members said they would not have sought out creating voting districts themselves.

The resolution is the first step board members must take as they prepare to plot new voting districts that will contain roughly the same number of residents in each one.

The school district has historically used an at-large voting system, in which school board members are elected regardless of where they live in Glendale. School officials were required to shift to a district-based system after they were sued by Malibu attorney Kevin Shenkman last year for allegedly violating the California Voting Rights Act.

Glendale Unified co-interim Supt. Marc Winger, said the legal battle was one the school district could not win.

“I have to tell you, it was very wise to settle that suit early on. You cannot win these suits,” he said.

Glendale Community College made a similar voting-system switch last year to avoid litigation, and its new voting districts, which have been approved by state college officials, will take effect for the 2017 election.

Glendale Unified officials said they will aim to have their new districts in place for the same election and will spend the next several months assessing public input about how the district’s voting districts should be drawn.

“The resolution itself is pretty factual. It talks about the lawsuit … and it talks about really how we’re handling it,´ said Christine Walters, school board president. “Nowhere in there does it say, ‘We think this is a great idea.’”

During the April 2015 election, Glendale Unified asked voters whether they would support the school district changing the voting method, which would have paved the way for district officials to adopt voting districts on their own.

However, 10,349 residents who voted were against the change, and only 5,557 voters favored it.

Ten days later, Shenkman filed the lawsuit against the school district.

“This was not the voters’ choice when we brought it before them,” said school board member Jennifer Freeman. “This is not our choice, and we’re really working hard to make the best of a bad situation and to protect our public funds as best that we can so they can be in the classroom, where they need to be.”

Fellow school board member Greg Krikorian also said he was not pleased with the steps the district must take to change its voting system.

“It’s something that we have to do, and we’re kind of bound by it,” he said.