Legislators in Cobb County are redrawing the internal political boundaries for the school district and eliciting an outcry from board members who say partisanship is trumping parent interest.
The GOP-led Cobb House delegation has drawn a map that differs markedly from one the school board recommended in a 5-1 vote in August. Democratic and Republican board members say it splits cohesive parent groupings.
"We've got a couple of nutty legislators," said David Banks, a Republican from east Cobb whose economically well-off district will include more low-income minority students and parents if the changes are approved.
School boards, like other government entities, must redraw their political boundaries every decade to track population shifts identified by the federal census. Georgia maps must be approved by the Department of Justice because of a history of racial discrimination in elections. Among the elements that federal officials look for is intact "communities of interest," which typically means attendance zones where school maps are involved.
"I think you've got some risks with the Department of Justice when you put something out like that," said Banks, who cast the lone vote against the map the school board approved in August. "It's obviously violating communities of interest."
The map by state Rep. Earl Ehrhart, R-Powder Springs, carves out portions of the attendance zone for Osborne High School from the south Cobb post of Democrat Alison Bartlett. Students and parents, many of them black or Hispanic, would be shifted into Banks' whiter and wealthier post and that of Republican Tim Stultz.
Rep. David Wilkerson, D-Austell, said the map slices away just enough Democratic voters to make Bartlett vulnerable to a Republican challenger. Bartlett said lawmakers also are altering the racial balance. "They're diluting the minority voice," she said.
In response to the charges of partisanship, Ehrhart said, "To say that reapportionment is not about anything political is to deny the obvious." But he said he tried to reflect school feeder patterns and district history, and that he was confident his map would pass federal inspection.
The map drawn by the board last summer also split communities of interest, Ehrhart said. "There's no way you can draw a map that takes in every single one," he said, "but we tried hard."
Ehrhart's map has been approved by the county's House delegation and is awaiting a vote by the whole House, which typically defers to local legislators' wishes. Then it will face scrutiny by senators.
John Williams, the treasurer of the parent-teacher-student association at Osborne, said parents are upset. "Right now, all of our feeder schools are under one school board member," he said. "We can all come together and voice our opinion." But that will change if the new map is approved, he said.
Williams said Banks may be a fair board member, "but if people are coming to you from a low socioeconomic community and people are coming to you from a high socioeconomic community, who are you going to listen to most?"
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