Lawmakers from DeKalb County have adopted a map that reapportions local school board districts without reducing the number of seats as required by law.
DeKalb delegates to the Georgia House of Representatives unanimously approved a new map Wednesday with seven single-member districts and two at-large districts, said the delegation chairman, Rep. Howard Mosby, D-Atlanta.
The map addresses population shifts documented by the federal census, but it does not satisfy a new law passed last year mandating the elimination of at least two DeKalb school board seats by January.
Lawmakers have clashed over the mandate, in part because it is illegal to eliminate the seat of a sitting board member. This year, most of the board seats up for re-election are in north DeKalb, so map proposals drawn with fewer seats have tended to place board members from the south in districts that stretch far into the county's northside.
If nothing else is done, the same controversy will exist when mostly southern members are up for re-election in 2014. The county is divided racially north and south.
The Senate has passed a bill that would give a temporary respite. SB 412, introduced by Sen. Fran Millar, R-Dunwoody, would delay the mandatory elimination of board seats until January 2015.
"The only thing we've done is move the issues that we're dealing with today back two years," said Sen. Emanuel Jones, the Decatur lawmaker who leads the Senate delegation. He and his colleagues adopted a seven-district map that will be discarded if Millar's two-year delay becomes law.
Mosby said he has a solution. He plans to introduce a local bill Monday that would shorten the terms of the board seats up for election this year. Then, all nine seats would be open in 2014, when lawmakers can draw a map without regard to who is in office.
Mosby is confident it will pass, but Jones is less sanguine.
"I think we've got unanimity over here in the Senate," Jones said, "but if the House doesn't pass it, we're going to have some issues."
Jones said if the House and Senate aren't able to come up with a solution that complies with the law, the drawing of the school board map might wind up in the courts.
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