Get Involved: Create your Communities of Interest

Your input is needed to shape NVUSD’s new Board of Trustee Areas!

Your input will help us:

Make sure NVUSD knows about your community. In order to keep your community together in new trustee area boundaries, the Board first needs to know that it exists and where it is!
Give your community a voice and make sure it has equal access to the political process.
Help shape new boundaries that give your community an opportunity to elect candidates who represent your interests on issues that are important to your community.

What is a Community of Interest (COI)?

A COI is a group of people in a defined geographic location that share a common interest. The point of forming a COI is because although census and other outside data can lend support, it cannot replace the personal knowledge of the community when undergoing a redistricting process.

The definition of a COI is purposely broad, leaving communities a lot of discretion in determining which issues are important to them. Communities of Interest are often defined as “a contiguous population which shares common social and economic interests that should be included within a single Trustee Area for purposes of fair and effective representation.”
Communities of Interest are best documented through oral, written, or digital input from individuals or groups with first-hand knowledge of them.

This page gives you all the details you need to create and submit your Community of Interest to the NVUSD Board of Education by the deadline of December 10 2021. Read below to find the following information:

Steps to establish your Community of Interest:

Define your COI
Explain reason for keeping your COI within one Trustee area
Document your COI by including a map or writing down the boundaries of your COI
Send your completed COI materials to the Board of Education by December 10

1. Define your COI: What is the nature of the bond or common interest of your community?

There are no wrong answers to these questions! The only limitation is that your community should not be defined by its support for a political party, candidate, or incumbent. Please describe what the common interests of your community are, and why or how they are important. For example:

If your Community of Interest is built around a school then your testimony should include the name and location of the school and describe your community’s involvement in it or why it is important. You might say that the surrounding community is involved with the school in various ways and perhaps accesses a variety of educational and recreational opportunities there.
You may also identify a COI based on a shared culture or heritage of residents in a specific area. Please indicate why it is a common bond, for example, “because of our shared history and language, we work together on cultural projects and this creates a sense of unity and understanding.”

2. Why is it beneficial for your community to be kept together in one Trustee Area?

When you talk about your Community of Interest, consider explaining why it should be kept together in a district and why splitting it would be problematic. For example:

A Community of Interest working on improving a specific school may find it more effective when residents in the respective area can work together with one Trustee, rather than multiple Trustees.
A small COI that is working to receive government support may find that it has less chances of receiving support if split into two.

3. Document your COI / Create your own COI map

Please tell us where the exterior boundaries of your COI are so we can locate it on a map. For example, write down landmarks, streets, bodies of water, or railroad tracks that indicate the location of the outside border of the community. In this step, you may use this NVUSD Community of Interest COI Form and follow instructions. You may also want to include a map showing the location of the COI, along with oral or written testimony identifying the location, which can be extremely helpful to locate the COI. A map can be created using free online programs such as Google maps or drawmycacommunity.org. Please read below for instructions.

In addition, a map showing the location of the COI, along with your oral or written testimony identifying the location, can be extremely helpful to locate the COI. Along with the written description of your community via the COI Form, you will be able to draw your community’s location on a map using a free mapping tool to let the Board know where it is.

Using the “Draw My CA Community” mapping tool:

DrawMyCACommunity.org is a free, online mapping application that can be used to submit your Communities of Interest to the California State Citizens Redistricting Commission, as well as to Napa Valley Unified School District to be considered during the Board of Trustee redistricting process. This website is available anywhere you can log on to the internet. If you need help using the website at any point, click on the help button in the top right corner to view a tutorial, chat with tech support, or read the user guide. You can use Draw My CA Community as a guest or by creating an account. If you make an account you’ll be able to save your work as a draft and finish it later. To create a new account, click the “Sign up here” link on the home page, complete the form, and check your email. Follow the instructions in the email we send you to verify your account. If you do not see a verification email, check your spam folder.

To create your map:

Zoom into your community’s location on the map, or use the search tool to find it.
Use the drawing tools to highlight the area you consider to be your community.
Some communities are small, consisting of just a few city blocks. Others can be much larger and can include multiple cities. Let us know where you consider your community to be, no matter how big or small!
Your community should be drawn as one shape on the map, so that you can walk from one end of the map to the other without disruption. Avoid drawing a map that represents your community as broken up into more than one piece.
For further instructions on how to use any of the map or drawing features, please visit: https://drawmycalifornia.org/documentation.html#user-guide

5. Share your COI to the Board of Education in one of the following ways:

Attend one of the NVUSD hearings! You can let the Board of Trustees know about your COI by providing a public comment during a hearing or by writing it down and dropping the information off. Email the information to redistricting2021@nvusd.org or Mail or drop it off at: Napa Valley Unified School District, 2425 Jefferson Street, Room 124 Napa, CA 94558
Complete the NVUSD COI Community of Interest Form which will be available for the Board to review
If you used the “Draw My CA Community” --- Click the Menu button (an icon with three bars) in the top right corner of the screen and select “Export.” You can choose to download your map as a PDF, a shapefile, or an equivalency file. Shapefiles and equivalency files can be used in mapping software and are most useful to the Board for drawing trustee areas. Once you have downloaded your COI file(s), email the files to the NVUSD Board of Education. Open your email and write a new message to redistricting2021@nvusd.org. Attach the downloaded file(s) (if sending a shapefile, you must attach the entire folder of files), and press send.

Please submit your COI before December 10, 2021, so we can consider it when creating a draft map. Thank you for participating in this important project!