Printed in the Herald-Times, June 9, 2013. (Comments)
To the Editor:
It is unfortunate that the MCCSC School Board has decided not to redraw the school board district maps that were approved in 1994.
In the time since that map was approved, two population counts by the U.S. Census have mandated redrawing of city and county council districts as well as state legislative and Congressional districts, but MCCSC is sticking with a map that is nearly twenty years old.
One of the reasons that the map was re-drawn in the first place is to balance population, and the populations of districts in the 1994 map are now wildly out of balance.
I simply cannot understand how one can look at the existing map and see it as defensible. The maps do not even pretend to be contiguous, with several islands of one district surrounded completely by another district and not touching the rest of the district.
You can see images of the full map and a more detailed map by following these two links: http://bit.ly/11IcNEn and http://bit.ly/15Fp68R.
If changing the map is really as expensive and time consuming as opponents of change say, why not replace districts with an at-large system? School Board members are already elected across all of MCCSC.
Scott Tibbs.
