Pasco School District considers creating board districts to ensure diverse representation

In 2017, the city of Pasco responded to a lawsuit from the ACLU and redrew its city council districts to ensure that minorities in the city have a voice on who sits on the council.

Now, the Pasco School District is in the process of a similar effort after a resident of the city approached the board and asked them reconsider how board members are elected.

The city hired an outside attorney and a demographer to review the legal and logistical feasibility of creating districts, rather than electing the five board members on an "at-large" basis.

In other words, it appears that the Pasco School District could be divided into single-member districts in some fashion, and Latinos would be the majority in one or more of those districts," attorney John Safarli reported to the school board at its meeting last week.

He said the goal would be to redraw the districts to establish a "minority majority" in some of the districts.

Some school board members expressed concerns about whether those districts would be divided up based on the number of eligible voters, or total population.

Safarli said courts have said the district lines could be drawn either way.

Board members wanted to make sure that there are enough eligible voters in each district that there is an adequate pool of eligible candidates to represent those districts.

Currently the district has five at-large board members, and will continue the initiative to change the way the board is elected, possibly implementing three members assigned to specific districts and two at-large seats.