City of Los Angeles Redistricting Plan

Issue

In August 2021 the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) Redistricting Commission was beginning the process of redrawing LAUSD’s School Board Member (Board of Education) district boundaries in the City of Los Angeles. LAUSD serves over 600,000 students at more than 1,000 schools across the LA region. Their final redistricting plan for the City of LA was to be completed by the end of October, and for it to be a success it was essential that the many communities across the City - especially hard-to-reach communities - participated in the public process, providing testimony at public hearings and input on draft district maps.

Solution

To raise awareness of the Commission’s efforts, and the critical need for community involvement in the redistricting process, LAUSD brought on North Star Alliances. With no time to spare, NSA immediately implemented a large-scale outreach and engagement strategy, which targeted the City of Los Angeles’ hardest-to-reach communities. NSA’s key tactics included:

• Building a robust target list of the hardest-to-reach communities across the City of Los Angeles that included key stakeholders to engage, including:
  _{LAUSD stakeholders, educational advocacy organizations, civic engagement organizations, educational activist groups, neighborhood councils, parents groups, elected officials and government agencies, labor organizations, local political organizations, religious organizations, youth and family centers.}

• Crafting bilingual educational materials to be circulated to target audiences about the redistricting process and how important it was for communities to participate.
• Spearheading grassroots outreach efforts that included calling, emailing, and on-the-ground surveying in target areas.
• Leading digital outreach efforts via social media that hyper targeted key communities and stakeholders, which ultimately reached over half a million users.
• Working with LAUSD to organize an additional 10 virtual public hearings to receive public testimony.

Results

Due to NSA’s comprehensive outreach efforts, the district saw unprecedented levels of community awareness and participation in the redistricting process. In total, more than 1,200 Angelenos attended Commission meetings and hearings, and Commission staff received more than 2,100 pieces of written and verbal testimony from the public. Further, NSA helped to activate multiple parent and community-based groups that organized over 25 virtual and in-person engagements where they provided an overview of the redistricting process and talked about opportunities for engagement in their communities. Ultimately, NSA’s efforts contributed significantly to ensuring the Commission’s redistricting process was transparent, effective, and reflective of the communities’ interests.