State Approves College Board Elections by District in 1996 : Education: The board has not had a minority member since it was formed in 1978. The new system is expected to increase chances for minority representation.

LONG BEACH AREA — The State Board of Education has approved a plan to create five racially diverse districts from which trustees for Long Beach City College will be chosen starting in 1996.

The city college board, which has not had a minority member since it was formed in 1978, earlier had approved elections by district in an effort to diversify. The board currently is elected at-large.

Under the new plan, trustees will be elected from five areas within the college district, which includes all of Long Beach, Signal Hill, Avalon and parts of Lakewood. More than half of the residents in the district are black, Latino or Asian.

Some of the areas have a high percentage of minority residents, which presumably would increase the election chances of minority candidates, college officials said.

“(The college) now stands an excellent chance to have a diverse board,” said Gladys Guttierez, a representative of the League of United Latin American Citizens. “That pleases us a great deal.”

State law requires that the trustee election plan be placed before voters in April, but board members last month asked state education officials to waive the election. College officials estimated they would save as much as $30,000 by avoiding an election.

The state earlier this month agreed to waive the election.

The current college board has been pushing for the plan since 1991, when it established an 11-member committee of representatives from the city’s various ethnic communities.

The committee created a boundary map that was approved by the board in late August. The college district boundaries are virtually identical to those created by the Long Beach Unified School District in 1988. After Long Beach Unified switched to district elections, the first African American and first Latina won seats on the board.

Student enrollment at the college is 45% white, 21.5% Latino, 12.5% African American, 12.5% Asian, 4.5% Filipino, 1% Native American and 3% other.

Supporters of the new plan said that districts--each made up of about 90,000 residents--will reduce the cost of a campaign, which can run into the tens of thousands of dollars.

“The election process for a large city has become an expensive proposition,” Trustee William G. Millington said after the board approved the boundaries last summer. “Minority candidates were sort of pushed out of that process.”

The first elections by district will be in April, 1996. All five trustee positions will be on the ballot. Board members Millington and Donald M. Weaver are up for reelection in April. Both trustees supported the districting plan, and have said they intend to run for reelection in 1994.

The board came under criticism from the Latino community earlier this year when trustees voted 3 to 2 to hire Barbara A. Adams, who is white, as the new college president. The board passed over three Latino applicants who had doctorates in education. Adams does not have a doctorate.

Proposed Districts

Ethnic breakdown of Long Beach City College population by voting district.

AREA 1 AREA 2 AREA 3 AREA 4 AREA 5 Latino 21.7% 34.7% Anglo 48.3% 17.3% 32.6% 78.2% 82.6% Black 17.2% 22.8% 13.6% 4.6% 2.1% Asian 11.9% 24.5% 13.% 5.6% 5.3% American Indian 0.6% 0.3% 0.6% 0.5% 0.5% Other 0.3% 0.3% 0.3% 0.1% 0.1% Population 95,030 92,474 90,939 92,165 94,330

Source: Long Beach City College