Trustees of the Ripon Unified School District gave their support of a redistricting plan Monday calling for near equal population boundaries.
They favored the plan presented by Trustee Kit Oase and former board member Ernie Tyhurst otherwise known as “Plan A – Balanced Plan” consisting of real numbers from the 2020 U.S. Census for the proposed realignment boundaries.
An informational meeting is scheduled for Wednesday at 6 p.m. in the Ripon High Library. Plan A, from there, could be up for approval at the Jan. 10 board meeting.
“We were able to do some fine tuning from the last time,” said Tyhurst, who worked with Oase on the 2014 plan.
He added: “We had balanced boundaries in 2014. But in 2020, those boundaries got out of whack.”
Trustee Chad Huskey, for example, represents Area 1, which is where the City of Manteca is developing the Hat Ranch Project. The population in that area since 2010 (3,538) has grown since 2020 (5,349), making it a difference of 1,811.
The redrawing of the Area 1 boundaries under the Balanced Plan would drop those numbers to 4,054 while Area 2 as represented by Trustee Vince Hobbs would maintain 4,246 and Oase’s Area 3 would be at 4,334.
According to the 2020 census, Ripon Unified has an overall population of 20,643.
Area 4, as represented by board President Caroline Hutto, would have 4,102 and Christina Orlando’s Area 5 would have 4,017 under Plan A.
The board seats occupied by Huskey, Hobbs and Oase will be up for election in 2022 while Hutto and Orlando’s Trustee Areas 4 and 5 won’t go before the voters until November 2024.
Oase and Tyhurst used the following criteria / factors – equal population, contiguous territory, communities of interest respected, geographic compactness, no special protection provided to incumbents, and growth corridors – to maintain a population balance.
They added that, ideally, at least one school should be contained within the boundary of each trustee area.
“In the previous reapportionment plan, this was achieved in four of the five existing trustee areas, with the No. 5 Trustee Area being within three blocks of an elementary school.
“In the 2020 plan, all five trustee areas would have a school in their area with one being immediately adjacent to the school,” Oase and Tyhurst said in their report.
Board members, in addition, gave the nod to Oase, Tyhurst and Superintendent Ziggy Robeson to represent RUSD at the Feb. 16 meeting of the San Joaquin County Board of Education’s County Committee on School District Organization.
They also authorized for Oase and Tyhurst to work with the County Geographic Information Service to finalize details of the plan before submitting it over to SJC Registrar of Voters office.
