School Board OKs Legislative Priorities

Redistricting of a different sort will be up for discussion at tonight’s Paulding County School Board meeting. Dallas-Hiram Patch will be covering the meeting here live.

Thought parents and community members , tonight’s public hearing scheduled during the school board’s 6:15 p.m. meeting is focused on changing board member district lines. The goal of board redistricting is to get the population of the districts as equal as possible based on the latest U.S. Census numbers.

“From the district’s standpoint, they’re just trying to draw districts where they get them all equally represented,” Board Attorney Tom Cable said. “Whether it goes into effect at this upcoming election or two years after that, it really won’t make any difference, I think, to the board. We just got the Census numbers this year, so we couldn’t have done it [earlier].

“We would ask the Georgia General Assembly to introduce local legislation at the regular session in January, and it would probably take effect immediately. If they couldn’t do it where it could take effect immediately, because you do have qualifying coming up for upcoming elections, then it may be something that has a delayed effect where it may start with the next election, so we may draw the districts but it wouldn’t take effect until the next election.”

Cable said that if redistricting is approved early next year, it is possible that it could take effect for the 2012 election cycle, though election officials may choose to not enact it until the next cycle.

Cable added that one of the goals of the redistricting process would be to retain all board members in their current seats.

“The idea is to try to draw districts so board members aren’t drawn into the same district. I think we’ll be able to do that,” he said. “It’s not like we have any board members that live next door to each other, so I don’t think there will be any issues.”

Though candidates for school board can only qualify for the district in which they reside—the board also has one at-large seat—all board members are elected countywide.

The board meets today at 6:15 p.m. in the central office boardroom. The agenda as posted on the district website can be found here.