General Information about Trustee Areas

How are SJCCD Trustees elected?

There are seven trustees on the SJCCD Board. Each one represents a specific geographic area, which is called a "trustee area" or election district. Residents of each trustee area vote only for candidates who live in their area. Candidates for each seat must live in the trustee area they will represent. This is called a by-district election system.

How are the trustee areas determined?

California Community College District governing boards are subject to the federal Voting Rights Act and the 'one person, one vote principle' of the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution. The Voting Rights Act prohibits electoral systems that deny or abridge the voting rights of protected racial and language minority groups. The 'one person, one vote principle' requires that governing board member districts be as equal in population as possible and that election systems that are at-large meet the one person, one vote test. In the SJCCD, the trustees are required to be residents of a particular area, and their areas must meet the requirements of the Voting Rights Act. The redistricting process is governed by the US Constitution, federal law, and California law.

Every ten years, a new US census is conducted. Pursuant to Education Code 5019.5, California Community Colleges are subject to mandatory redistricting after every census. Trustee areas must be relatively equal in total population using the new census counts. Once new census data is released, all districts must evaluate their trustee areas to determine if they still have equal populations using the new counts. If not, trustee area boundaries need to be adjusted to re-balance the trustee area populations. Some variation is permitted, but the rule of thumb is that the difference between the most- and least-populous election districts should not exceed ten percent of the "ideal" district's population, which is one-seventh of the district's total population. Federal law also requires that election districts be drawn to respect protected race/ethnic groups so that their communities are neither divided nor overly concentrated in individual areas. Protected groups are race/ethnic/language groups, including Hispanics, African Americans, Asian Americans, and Native Americans (as well as some other groups). CA Elections Code Section 22000 also lists criteria that may be considered during the redistricting process:

1. Topography
2. Geography
3. Cohesiveness, contiguity, integrity, and compactness of territory, and
4. Community of interests of the division. (A 'community of interest' is a geographical area, such as a neighborhood, that would benefit from being in the same area because of shared interests, views, or characteristics. Downtown areas, historic districts, and housing subdivisions are a few examples of areas that would be communities of interest.)

Redistricting 2022

SJCCD worked with Redistricting Partners, a firm based in Sacramento, CA, to review the census data and propose revised district trustee areas based on the new information. These options were approved by the Board of Trustees and forwarded to the County Committee on School District Re-Organization (chaired by the Siskiyou County Superintendent of Schools). These changes were later approved by the Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors and implemented for the 2022 election cycle.

The final redistricting plan with different overlays is available at: Redistricting 2020 Maps and Data

Interactive Google map