Southern Kern Unified holds public hearing on trustee-area drafts, directs staff to post revised "yellow" map

At a public hearing on draft trustee-area boundaries, the Southern Kern Unified School District reviewed three published map options and a new, not-yet-posted fourth alternative that the demographer says could place a potential new elementary school site in Trustee Area 5.

Dr. Justin Levitt, the district’s demographer from National Demographics (introduced at the meeting as Justin Levitt), told the board the session was the first of two public hearings on proposed trustee-area maps and outlined the process and legal criteria. "Tonight basically is the first of our 2 public hearings on the draft maps to allow us to look at and study the revised the maps," Levitt said, noting the board could post revised maps for review next week and make a final selection in mid-January. He said the drafts meet the “one person, one vote” standard by keeping deviation under roughly 10% and that map-drawers did not use partisan or incumbent residence data when drawing lines.

Levitt described the three published options (referred to in the meeting as the green, orange and purple maps)…