Board narrows options for trustee-area maps, directs demographer to produce revised plan

Trustees of the Rocklin Unified School District on May 15 reviewed a set of draft trustee‑area maps and heard extended public comment before agreeing to ask their demographer to prepare a revised map for final consideration.

Kristen Parks of the National Demographics Corporation summarized the legal and technical rules governing the transition from at‑large to by‑trustee elections, saying the district must use 2020 census counts and comply with the Voting Rights Act and state criteria including contiguity, identifiable boundaries and minimizing division of communities of interest. "We use the 2020 census as our baseline," Parks said during the presentation.

Public commenters and several trustees said map 111 best preserves neighborhood cohesion and elementary‑school communities. Thomas Garing, who said he lives at 2824 Springfield Drive, told the board his review of the 15 maps found map 111 kept most elementary schools together and used major streets as boundaries. "I feel that proposed map 111 was the best map," he said.

Trustees discussed a small set of targeted edits — moving a Sterling Drive tract, keeping Twin Oaks together, and swapping a Cobblestone cluster — to address imbalances and reduce one district having four elementary schools inside its boundary. Board members asked Parks whether those changes were feasible without pushing population deviation above legal thresholds.

Rather than adopt a map immediately, the board directed the demographer to draft a revised map (to be numbered 116) reflecting the suggested edits, post that draft for at least seven days, and hold a special meeting to take final action. The board’s decision preserves the required public‑notice timeline for map revisions and gives the county committee time to consider the district’s adopted map before its scheduled June 10 review.

The move follows a public hearing that included multiple residents urging the board to avoid splitting established homeowner associations and elementary‑school attendance areas. The demographer noted that most draft maps meet legal deviation limits, with the exception of an unbalanced community‑submitted map that required revision to fall within the permissible range.

Next steps: staff and the demographer will post the revised draft map, publish the election sequencing associated with the selected map, and present the material at the special meeting for public hearing and final adoption.