ENCINITAS — The San Dieguito Union High School District has selected its future electoral districts, and the map is a nod to the district’s southern edge.
The school board unanimously chose “Cranberry 1” as the future electoral map, along with the companion sequence of elections.
The final map carves the three southern districts into east-west strips and keeps Carmel Valley and Pacific Highlands Ranch in their own districts.
One of the final maps created during the process, Cranberry 1 was created based on feedback from residents who said they wanted to see those two communities in their own districts, Superintendent Eric Dill said.
Dill said that the bulk of the feedback the district received after its first few public meetings was from the school district’s southern communities. Several came to the meeting to voice support for the map.
“In the other maps, there was some overlap between the two neighborhoods, and the people said they wanted to see those communities preserved to the extent possible,” Dill said.
In Cranberry 1, District 1 includes Leucadia, New Encinitas and Old Encinitas, District 2 includes Olivenhain and the southern edge of Carlsbad around La Costa Canyon High School, District 3 includes Cardiff-by-the-Sea, Solana Beach and northern Rancho Santa Fe, District 4 includes Del Mar, Carmel Valley and Fairbanks Ranch and District 5 includes the Pacific Highlands Ranch and Torrey Highlands communities.
The map keeps all five current board members in separate districts: Maureen Muir lives in District 1, Beth Hergesheimer in District 2, John Salazar in District 3, Joyce Dallesandro in District 4 and Amy Herman in District 5.
Muir, Salazar and Herman’s districts would be up for election in 2018, while Hergesheimer and Dallesandro’s would be up for re-election in 2020.
The region’s largest high school district chose to pre-emptively move forward with the transition from at-large elections to ones where voters choose a trustee based on their region after several cities in North County faced the threat of litigation if they didn’t make the switch.
Unlike the city of Encinitas, which had a protracted and at times controversial process, the school district’s district formation process proceeded with little fanfare.
