A special called meeting of the City of Newton Mayor and Board of Aldermen was held last Tuesday evening, July 9, where they approved the newly designed school board districts for the Newton Municipal School District. Tuesday’s action sets up a more likely scenario where the election will be included on the General Election ballots on November 5.
After receiving word from the East Central Planning and Development District that the proposed school board district lines had been finalized, the special called meeting was held to discuss and approve the proposed districts, as well approve a public hearing and advertising. Alderwoman Temeka Drummond was not present at the meeting, while Alderman Eric McCalphia took part in the meeting via conference call.
Jenifer Buford, Community Development Director at ECPDD, presented the proposed school board districts map to the board and offered explanations on how they drew up the lines.
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“We’re using public law data, which is broken down by population, by block. And it gives us the racial composition and if they’re 18 or older,” said Buford. “And we were able to obtain the school district lines, which were drawn before anybody in this room was born. So please do not think that we drew the lines. Somebody in the 1930’s drew those lines.”
Using data from the 2020 Census, Buford said that the total population within the school district is 6,272, made up of 3,731 Black/African American residents, 2,305 White residents, and 236 other residents (American Indian, Asian, Hispanic). Broken down into percentages, the NMSD population is 59% Black/African American, 38% White and under 1% other. After getting this data, she said that they were able to begin creating the school board district lines.
“You had no lines to use as a guide, so we had to start from scratch,” said Buford. “The rule is, you have five representatives, you get the percentages of each one of the races and multiply that by the number of school board member districts.”
In accordance with the statute, the newly created school board districts had to be based on where each of the current board members reside.
“We had to protect those board members that are already on the board, so we didn’t arbitrarily draw lines,” Buford said. “We drew lines based on where the current school board members live.”
Board District Layout
According to Buford, the ideal population for each of the five school board districts would be 1,254, with deviations no larger than 10%. All the proposed districts are well within the deviation.
-District 1 is made up of a total population of 1,222 people: 306 White, 865 Black/African American, and 51 Other.
-District 2 has a total population of 1,226: 425 White, 762 Black/African American, and 39 Other.
-District 3 is made up of a total population of 1,272: 444 White, 788 Black/African American, and 40 Other.
-District 4 has a population of 1,276: 720 White, 509 Black/African American, and 47 Other.
-District 5 has a total population of 1,276: 410 White, 807 Black/African American, and 59 Other.
“We feel like this is a fair plan, we feel like it’s a good plan, we feel like the school board members could live with it because all of them are within their district, with the exception of one,” said Buford.
Alderman Bob Bridges made a motion to adopt the plan and move forward to a hearing date. Alderman Michael Hillie seconded the motion. The motion carried unanimously.
The board also approved setting a public hearing for August 6, 2024, at 5 p.m., as well as advertising for it.
Candidate Qualification
The deadline for qualifying to be a candidate in November’s election is Sunday, September 1, 2024.
All candidates who are interested in qualifying for a school board position within the district that they live must file a Statement of Intent, Affidavit of the Candidate and a petition containing the signatures of no less than 50 qualified electors of that district with the Newton County Circuit Clerk.
Potential candidates who would like to qualify are welcome tp start filling out the paperwork and begin getting petitions started, but hold off on turning them in to Circuit Clerk Mike Butler’s office until after the public hearing the districts have been adopted by the City of Newton, and all information has been updated into the State Election Management System through the circuit clerk’s office.
