LOS ANGELES — A commission is working to redraw Los Angeles Unified School District lines and wants input from the community.
A Los Angeles city charter requires LAUSD boundaries be redrawn every 10 years. A 15-member commission has drafted three maps and needs public input to choose which map will govern LA’s students.
“We’re trying to create school board seats that people will vote on for the next 10 years and making sure we keep school communities whole,” said LAUSD Redistricting Chair Luis Sanchez. “That’s the most important thing for us. So if all these young kids from elementary attend all the way to high school, we want to make sure that community is represented by the same school board member.”
When the lines change, that means school board seats and resources can change too. Voters within each of the seven districts decide who will be school board representative.
Crenshaw High School student Malcom McKay doesn’t want to see his South LA community divided.
"I feel like it's important for the community not to be split up in the redistricting process because we come from a lot of history and traditions," McKay said.
South LA resident and parent Jairo Giron agrees. He has been spending time inside Community Coalition analyzing maps and attending commission meetings to make sure districts are equitable for students like his fifth-grade daughter.
“It looks like a drawing with a bunch of lines but man it’s going to have plenty of effect on our children and our future generations,” Giron said.
He wants neighborhoods to stay together so students get services like tutoring and mental health support. He fears being grouped with communities that aren’t similar won’t give South LA students the attention and resources they need.
“Our test scores, our way of life, our people, it’s very different,” Giron said.
Finding a way to unify those differences is the responsibility of the LAUSD Redistricting Commission. By law, each district must have the same amount of residents. Sanchez says calculating residents is complicated since the 2020 Census wasn’t accurate. Plus they have to account for residents who’ve left areas largely due to gentrification.
“District 5 here and this is District 2…these two collectively lost 70,000 residents,” Sanchez said.
The final map will determine how each neighborhood is represented for the next 10 years.
The commission will adopt a final map by the end of Oct. and is asking for as much feedback as possible before the final map is sent to the LA City Council and approved by Dec. 31.
The next public hearings are Monday Oct. 4 and Tuesday Oct. 6.