Facing lawsuit, Fremont school district will switch to elections by district

FREMONT » With the threat of a lawsuit looming, Fremont Unified will become the latest district to switch to elections that advocates hope reflect the diversity of its community.

The five-member Fremont School Board voted unanimously this month to transition from its current at-large system — in which voters citywide cast votes for all board member seats up for election — to a district system, where people vote only for candidates who represent the area they live in.

The Fremont Unified School District — the second largest in Alameda County with more than 35,000 students — received demand letters from two law firms in July and August alleging that its atlarge election system violates the California Voting Rights Act.

The system “dilutes the ability of Latinos … to elect candidates of their choice or otherwise influence the outcome” of the district’s school board elections, the letter from the Malibubased Shenkman & Hughes law firm says.

The firm says voting for the school board in Fremont is “racially polarized,” and even though “Latinos comprise approximately 14.5% of the student body of FUSD,” the “at-large elections have worked to the detriment of Latino voters and candidates,” violating the Voting Rights Act.

“In the last nine election cycles, only three Latino candidates have sought election to the FUSD board of trustees,” the letter says. And though those three candidates received “significant support from Latino voters,” they were “ultimately unable to secure seats on the board due to the bloc voting of the nonLatino majority,” the letter says.

The law firm contends the switch would help level the playing field and make it easier for Latinos, among other “protected classes,” to get candidates elected who represent their interests.

Under state law, the district board had a 45-day window after receiving the letters in which it could vote to signal its intention to switch to district elections, or it could face a possible lawsuit from the firm.

The board voted Sept. 11 to make the switch, and it now has 90 days to complete the transition, during which it cannot be sued.

The board will hold five meetings to gather feedback from the public and present preliminary maps with the help of a consultant to divide the city into five roughly equal voting areas for school board members to represent.

Shenkman & Hughes is the same law firm that threatened the Fremont City Council over its election system two years ago, prompting the city to switch to district elections and to add two seats to the council. The firm, under the Voting Rights Act, has coerced many cities across the state to do the same.

“I think it’s really unfortunate that Fremont Unified is having to face this,” school board member Ann Crosbie said at the Sept. 11 meeting.

“Having already seen our city go through this process, it was really clear that we are not typical in that we don’t have concentrations (of types of voters) but that we are pretty homogeneous across the district, which is unusual and fantastic,” Crosbie said.

“And instead of doing what it’s intended to do, it actually pits areas against each other in a way that we don’t normally see. So I think it’s really unfortunate we’re in this situation,” she said.

Board member Dianne Jones, echoing other board member sentiments, said she was concerned about “adding territorialism” to the board.

She said she and her colleagues should “still behave as one board serving one district,” even after the switch.

Local agencies that try to fight the law firms that bring these kind of voting rights demands have lost their lawsuits at the expense of taxpayers. The city of Palmdale in Los Angeles County, for example, paid $4.5 million to Shenkman & Hughes in a 2015 settlement after unsuccessfully trying to defend its atlarge voting system against a lawsuit.

And though the Fremont school district won’t fight the legal challenge, each attorney is entitled under state law to bill the district for up to $30,000 in legal fees for the cost of research and preparing the demand letters.

Union City and the New Haven Unified School District have both been forced to make the transition to district elections this year after receiving similar demand letters from law firms.

They join other Bay Area governments, including the cities of Menlo Park, Martinez, Santa Clara and Sunnyvale, that have made the switch.

The Fremont school board will hold the first meeting where the public can learn about and weigh in on the composition of the future district maps on Wednesday.

The open session of the board meeting begins at 6:30 p.m. It will be held in the district’s board room at 4210 Technology Drive in Fremont.