Lucia Mar school district approves new trustee areas

For the first time in 50 years, the Lucia Mar Unified School District has approved a change to its board makeup — though the changes won’t take place until 2018.

The Lucia Mar Unified School District Board of Trustees voted 6-1 on Tuesday night to approve a map that gives Nipomo another trustee on the board, and it takes away a trustee from the Arroyo Grande area.

“Maybe it started early on in Nipomo, but it is certainly not about Nipomo,” said trustee Chad Robertson, who represents Nipomo. “Just like it’s not about Oceano, Shell Beach, Pismo Beach, Halcyon, Huasna, Arroyo Grande, Los Berros, and on and on and on. It’s about the Lucia Mar school district.”

The decision comes at the end of a yearslong effort by parent advocacy groups and community members to better balance representation on the board amid a shifting district population.

The governing board is made up of seven trustees, each serving four-year terms and is chosen by voters districtwide. The board represents four geographic areas and each area has a set number of trustees based on population when the district unified in 1966. Since then, the population throughout the district has grown — especially in Nipomo — but the number of trustees representing each area has stayed the same.

At several meetings this year, the board has considered maps that would fix the imbalance, though some of the proposed solutions upset community members because in order to give underrepresented Nipomo another trustee, Oceano would be combined with another area to free up that trustee spot.

At the meeting Tuesday night, it was clear that most trustees preferred keeping Oceano as its own area.

“I’m really heartened by how this discussion has gone tonight, because I left our last study session feeling pretty protective about this agreement we made 50 years ago, to guarantee Oceano a guaranteed seat at the table,” said trustee Don Stewart, who represents Grover Beach and Pismo Beach. “It’s really important to me that we are representing those without a voice. So the fact that my impression is we are moving forward in keeping Oceano its own area, I’m really pleased with that.”

The board considered five variations of a map that keeps Oceano as its own area and instead takes a trustee from Arroyo Grande, which currently has three members on the board.

The approved map extends the southern boundaries of Oceano to Woodland Hills, East El Campo and Halcyon roads on the Nipomo Mesa, and pulls the northern boundary back from Farroll Avenue (it’s current delineation) to The Pike.

The new map will go before the San Luis Obispo County Board of Education, which is expected to approve the change.

After deciding on the new map, the board also had the arduous task of deciding when the new trustee areas would be implemented.

Though there was some push from community members to move forward with implementing the new areas so that they would be in place for the November election, the board voted 5-2 to instead have the new Nipomo trustee seat available in the 2018 election.

“I’d like to defer to 2018 because it is smoother,” trustee Colleen Martin said. “I just think it will be easier, smoother and fairer.”

If the board had chosen to hold an election for the new Nipomo trustee seat in 2016, rather than 2018, it would have put at least one of the trustees in an interesting spot: Vicki Meagher, one of three trustees from Area 2 representing Arroyo Grande, would be unable to run again this election cycle, because her seat will be non-existent once the new map is implemented. Meagher did not speak on the implementation schedule, though she did vote in favor of 2018 over 2016.

The board also contentiously had to decide whether it would stagger trustee terms in areas with multiple trustees so that one seat was up for election every two years.

As the board now stands, in the Arroyo Grande area, terms are staggered among the three trustees, with at least one seat available every two years. Area 4, which encompasses Pismo Beach and Grover Beach, has both its trustees on the same election cycle, however, meaning the two seats are open only every four years. (Oceano and Nipomo seats, with one trustee apiece, are open every four years, as well).

The question Tuesday night was whether the board should take action to stagger the terms for the new Nipomo trustee so there was an election every two years, and stagger the Pismo Beach/Grover Beach trustee terms, as well.

To do this, the two highest vote-getters in the seat election for those areas would have to draw lots to see who would serve a four-year term and who would serve a two-year term. After the first two-year term is completed, the seat would go back to being up for election every four years.

The reset would stagger the terms so there was one election every two years for each area except Oceano, but some members of the board questioned the necessity of making such a switch and worried that the chance of drawing the shorter term might dissuade potential candidates for the seat from running.

“It’s like the citizens themselves kind of lose out, because they don’t have a representative who knows a lot of the ins and outs, and they aren’t going to be there for that long, and then they have to start all over again,” trustee Dee Santos said.

The switch would have directly impacted Santos and Stewart, both of whom are up for election again this year.

The board narrowly decided against staggering the terms, 4-3, with trustees Martin, Meagher and Robertson dissenting.

This story was originally published March 2, 2016 at 1:22 PM with the headline "Lucia Mar school district approves new trustee areas."