WSD Proposes School Board Election Voting Districts

The Wenatchee School District invites the public to provide input on its voting district proposal. The School Board is a five-member elected body where all members are currently elected at-large. Under at-large voting, all voters within the School District boundaries cast their ballot for all School Board candidates. The School Board has found that the current at-large voting system may violate the Washington Voting Rights Act.  To correct the potential violation, it is being proposed that voting districts be adopted by the School Board where four members would be required to reside in a specific voting district and be elected only by voters within that same voting district. In addition, there would remain one member that is elected at-large. 

The Washington Voting Rights Act provides a process for the board to change its election system. The process requires public notice of the proposed redistricting plan, a comment period, and a public hearing. 

A presentation and public hearing on this proposal will be held on June 14, 2022, at 6 PM at the District’s central office located at 235 Sunset Ave, Wenatchee. Input can also be provided prior to the public hearing by submitting a written comment at the District Office or by email at white.k@wenatcheeschools.org

Board approval of a new election system by November 7, 2022, will result in a new election for all Wenatchee School District Board of Directors’ positions in the November 2023 General Election. Utilizing the newly adopted election system all members of the Board will need to run in the general election in November 2023.  After the election of all the members of the Board under the Plan, the District may subsequently choose to stagger the terms of its positions.

In 2021 the district contracted with Sammamish Data Systems to develop a proposal for director districts based on the 2020 census data. These boundaries are completely unrelated to school attendance boundaries: this process will not change any neighborhood school boundaries.

The proposed voting district boundaries would balance the population within the Wenatchee school district boundary so that all four voting districts would have approximately 11,729 residents. 

Proposed maps and demographic detail are available here