The Brownwood School Board of Trustees unanimously approved the district’s 2012 redistricting plan and resolution Monday night at their monthly board meeting.
According to school officials, single-member districts, used in school board elections, are required to evaluate the population of each of the existing single-member districts after each federal census. The evaluation determined that the 2010 census data indicates that the population of the most populous district exceeds the population of the least populous district by more than 10%; therefore the board is required to re-divide the district into the appropriate number of trustee districts no later than the 90th day before the date of the first regular school board election which occurs after the census is officially recognized.
The school district hired MKP Consulting to help evaluate and revise the boundary map and appointed a Redistricting Diversity Advisory Council to insure input from a diverse group of minority populations residing in BISD.
At a workshop late last month, Peg Pursor of MKP Consulting Company introduced several maps and recommended the one that best meets the requirements. After much discussion and with two minor changes that do not affect diversity requirements, the group collectively chose this map to present to the Department of Justice for final approval.
“The law states that everything is supposed to be within 10%, and if you will look at total population the deviation is actually 17% as far as total population among the different districts,” said BISD Superintendent Reece Blincoe. “But if you will look at voting age percentage, it’s 8.8%.”
Blincoe told the board that the district’s attorneys believe that the Department of Justice will accept this revised map based on the voting age percentages.
Blincoe said that the districts in the city of Brownwood changed very little during this process, but that district 4, north of Brownwood and extending up to Lake Brownwood and represented by Eric Evans, grew the most in territory to help meet the requirements.
In other Brownwood school board business at Monday’s meeting:
*School board members unanimously voted to approve and sign the standardized testing resolution. The resolution, which has been signed by 232 other school districts, shows support for this resolution and a stance against the direction of more standardized testing being mandated by the state.
*The school board received a report on campus disincline as well as a school nutrition report.
