Seattle School Board Directors Boundaries to Change - Part 2

 Reviewing Part 1:

- By law, the director regions must be reviewed after each Census. The directors had a lot of lead time to get to this work but, for whatever reason, are giving the public just a month to give input.

- There are currently seven director regions and that will not change.

- To note, in the primary, candidates are running ONLY in their districts. From the primary, the two top vote getters will then run citywide. 

The impression I have always had is that all directors represent the entire district. But they are "experts" on the schools in their region to help guide other directors who may not know that region or its schools well. In the last several years, directors have been moving away from community meetings and the notion that they will, at least, inquire about issues in their school in their regions. The Board is moving further and further away from the people who elect them. 

I looked at all three scenarios. Visually, it appears that both the southern districts, six and seven, will enlarge. In the north end, there is some shifting but not in truly dramatic ways. 

Currently, most director regions have somewhere between 12-15 schools in them.  However, in the south end, District 6 (Leslie Harris) has 18 schools and District 7 (Brandon Hersey) has a whopping 22 schools. (Some of these are smaller alternative programs but still.) 

Current Regions

District 1 covers the northern most end of the district, going completely from east to west. 

District 2 covers Greenwood, Phinney Ridge, Greenwood and Green Lake.

District 3 covers Ravenna, University area, Wedgwood, View Ridge and Laurelhurst.

District 4 covers Magnolia/Queen Anne/Ballard

District 5 covers the Central Area including Capitol Hill. 

District 6 covers West Seattle.  

District 7 covers SE Seattle. To note, a long north-south swath of this region is an industrial zone. 

Scenarios 

It's unclear to me what happened to some of the alternative programs like Interagency and Middle College but they don't show up in every scenario.

Scenario 1 rebalances the total populations for each district with near zero "deviation from ideal." Each region would have about 105,000 adult-aged citizens. The largest minority growth for all regions appears to be the Asian population, followed by the Hispanic/Latino and then "two or more races."

Looking at the maps, what is troubling to me is how District 5 (Central Area) only shifts slightly and yet it has the same population as much larger districts. And, in this scenario, we see District 7 (SE) go from 22 schools to 25 schools, while District 5 goes from 12 schools to 6. District 5 would have NO middle schools or K-8s. That's weird. 

Scenario 2 looks about the same as Scenario 1 but with wild swings of number of schools. For example, District 1 (far north across entire district which is Liza Rankin's district) would go from 13 to 16 schools. District 3 (Chandra Hampson's district) would take Meany from District 5 (Sarju's), leaving District 5 with no middle schools and again, just 6 schools in the district. District 7 would still be large at 23 schools.

Scenario 3 looks different in that at least three districts would enlarge. District 1 at the top would take parts of District 3 and District 2. District 5 would shift southward and District 6 would take a top to bottom chunk of District 7. 

It has the biggest swing in population from any other scenario, from District 3 have 106,979 to District 6 having 105,148. 

It also has the biggest swings in schools. Starting from smallest to biggest: D5, 6; D2, 7; D3, 12; D4, 12; D1, 15; D6, 17; D7, 23. 

What is troubling is how D5 gets larger in at least one scenario and yet stays at 6 schools. Taking out Meany and Washington from that area makes little sense and leaves its director with no middle schools. 

D5 is the ONLY district that keeps the same number of schools - 6 - in every scenario.  I do not like this outcome and I think someone should go back to the drawing board and make D5 not look like an outlier. I have to wonder why this happened.

FYI, this scenario to scenario comparison on numbers of schools? It's not in the BAR. Why not have, at a glance, a breakdown of schools from scenario to scenario? Hmmm.

- The district hired a firm, FLO Analytics, to do the data crunching. FLO is a GIS and data analytics firm that has done redistricting for several Washington state districts like Edmonds, Shoreline, and Spokane.

- According to the WA State RCW 29A.76.010, each director region should (as much as possible):

1. Be nearly equal in population

2. As compact as possible

3. Geographically contiguous area

4. Population data may not be used for purposes of favoring or disfavoring any racial group or political party.

5. Coincide as much as possible with existing natural boundaries and shall, to the extent possible, preserve existing communities of related and mutual interest. To the extent possible, redistricting plans shall preserve existing communities of related and mutual interest - which communities depends on public input. (That bold is theirs, not mine and so who speaks up is, apparently, who they will listen to. There are NO public meetings on just this topic. Your only options are the Let's Talk at the district website and the two Board meetings during the time period from September 28 to October 26th. I'll just say that at the Board meeting where they vote, directors are VERY likely to have already made their minds up.)

On that population issue, FLO states:

The appropriate measure of population is total population, not alternative measures like the number of voters or the citizen voting-age population (CAP). This reflects the principle that school board members represent all residents, not only those who are eligible to vote. 

FLO - on page 13 of their presentation - have a chart for all the director districts with the total population and how that relates to the work in terms of "deviation from ideal." It's an interesting chart. I don't know if the last redistricting used these same criteria, if so, the population in Seattle has shifted. 

For example, currently, the director with the smallest population is Brandon Hersey in District 7 which is SE Seattle. The director with the largest population is Vivian Song Maritz in District 4 (which I never would have guessed). Hersey has 93,691 citizens and Song Maritz has 124, 567 citizens. That latter number is by far the largest with the next largest region being Chandra Hampson's with 110,116.

Page 14 is also of interest because we see the numbers for "citizen voting age population percentages." District 4, which is Magnolia/Ballard/Queen Anne, has the largest number of white voters at 79.9% and the lowest number of Black voters at 2.3%. Conversely, District 7 has 19.1% of Black voters and only 38.1% are white. 

The district that, after the white number, has the most balanced population is Michelle Sarju's District 7 in the Central Area. You may have heard over the last decade plus that the Central Area had long been a Black area but gentrification has made many people unable to live in the area. My understanding is that the migration out has largely gone to the south end or even further out of Seattle. 

Another fascinating item to see in this chart is that Asians appear to make up the largest non-white group in Seattle and the largest non-white group in every director region from 29.9% in District 7 (SE) to 7.8% in District 4 (Magnolia/Ballard/QA). 

For all the director districts, the most evenly spread out non-white groups are those with two or more races and Hispanic/Latino.