The Redwood City School District Board of Trustees officially accepted their new roles last Wednesday, with María Díaz-Slocum and Cecilia Márquez serving as president and vice president, respectively.
The five elected trustees must rotate assignments during the annual organizational meeting which takes place at the end of each calendar year, per Board Policy 9100.
In addition to Díaz-Slocum (Area II) and Márquez (Area V), Janet Lawson (Area III) was sworn in as clerk; Mike Wells (Area IV) as the representative to San Mateo County’s Committee on School District Organization; and former president Alisa MacAvoy (Area I) became the liaison to the California and San Mateo County School Boards Associations.
“It has been a difficult year,” said Superintendent John Baker, acknowledging the mercurial nature of the pandemic and thanking MacAvoy for her service in 2021. “I admire your enthusiasm, your persistence, and your tenacity for our school district.”
The Redwood City School District Board of Trustees acts as the district’s official governing body. The five trustees, who each serve four-year terms, are elected in staggered cycles by the voters in their respective areas.
The board last week also reached consensus on a revision of the trustee areas, agreeing to move forward with Map 2A, which “keeps communities together,” according to Baker’s recent newsletter. A vote will take place in January 2022 to finalize the new boundaries.
This is part of an ongoing process to balance trustee areas following a December 2017 decision to shift from an “at-large” to a “by-trustee area” elections system. Because voters elect their district trustee based on their area of residence, redrawing the trustee map helps ensure that divisions are proportional to population.
Earlier this fall, Baker wrote in his newsletter, the district demographer advised the board to revise their map because compared with Areas I, II and III, Area IV had too many residents, and Area V had too few. Baker added that, according to federal law, “the school district needs to comply with federal law in maintaining two majority-minority trustee areas.”
The school board hosts public, bi-monthly meetings, on the second and fourth Wednesday of each month. Because of the pandemic, meetings take place over Zoom and begin at 7 p.m.
The first board meeting of the year is set for Wednesday, Jan. 12.
