One of the South Bay’s largest high school districts has finalized a new system for electing members of the board of trustees, just in time for its fall elections.
The Fremont Union High School District — which includes parts of Cupertino, Los Altos, San Jose, Santa Clara, Saratoga and Sunnyvale — approved a map Wednesday night that splits the district into five geographic zones. Voters in each zone will elect a candidate from that zone as part of the district’s move to implement a by-trustee area election system.
The new election system will replace the district’s at-large election process — in which voters elected any five candidates no matter where they resided — and take effect during the November election, when board president Jeff Moe and trustee Rod Sinks term out.
Initially, one trustee will be elected from a zone containing North Sunnyvale and the other from a zone encompassing West San Jose, Saratoga and parts of Santa Clara, all areas that have been historically underrepresented on the board. The remaining three districts, which include mostly Cupertino and Central Sunnyvale, will have to wait for the district’s 2026 elections before their candidates can be elected.
“We’ve had a lot of control over how we’re going to do the process,” board vice president Naomi Nakano-Matsumoto said during Wednesday’s meeting. “We’ve done our due diligence and in the end, it feels like this is the right thing, moving forward with area trustee elections.”
According to the board, the new map divides the population evenly across the zones and the borders closely align with existing high school attendance boundaries, along with local middle and elementary schools that are not part of Fremont Union. The map also keeps smaller city communities together, including Saratoga, Santa Clara, West San Jose and Los Altos, and allows for a majority Hispanic/Latino vote in the North Sunnyvale zone.
The district decided to transition in 2023, worried about the threat of a potential lawsuit from community members for allegedly violating the California Voting Rights Act, a state law that protects racial minority groups from having their votes diluted. At-large voting, critics say, can prevent minority groups from electing their candidates of choice when they are not the majority in a jurisdiction.
The district’s Hispanic/Latino voting population, which is mainly concentrated in North Sunnyvale and is a minority group protected under the act, has not had a trustee elected from the area, which the district worries could lead to a lawsuit. Out of the 30 board members elected since 1970, none have come from Santa Clara, Saratoga or North Sunnyvale, according to the district. Meanwhile, cities like Cupertino have boasted 13 and central Sunnyvale, eight.
Throughout the transition process, some community members wanted the board to reconsider, concerned that district staff did not adequately inform residents about the change or conduct a thorough analysis on whether it is needed. A petition was launched in January that garnered more than 2,300 votes to postpone the implementation until 2026.
Liang-Fang Chao, a Cupertino city councilmember who said she was representing herself when speaking on the matter, believes the process was rushed and would have liked to see the board wait or consider other options. She still supported the map the trustees approved, as each high school attendance area has a corresponding trustee area.
“It’s not possible to please anyone in every map. Some schools will be divided,” she said. “We were just asking the board to please be fair — we want to have fairness.”
Parent Jessie Jarecki, whose children will attend Homestead High School in Cupertino, believes it will always be difficult to get a majority of residents to agree on a map. She encouraged the trustees to approve the map, so they can focus on getting ready for the November election.
“You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do so we can have an election,” she said, “and start having people plan for the election.”