How should Wake school board election maps look? Here’s your chance to have a say.
Starting this week, the Wake County school system will hold three public meetings to get feedback on new voter maps that will be used for school board elections for the next decade.
A consultant hired by the Wake County school board has drawn up three different options for the election boundaries for the nine school board seats. The board is supposed to consider the feedback from the public hearings when it adopts new redistricting maps in March.
“We had no say or any hand in the maps that were created for us by the consultant,” school board chairwoman Lindsay Mahaffey said in an interview. “It’s important for folks to know that this process is happening and see it.”
Every 10 years, the school system uses the latest Census data to redraw new election boundaries for the board seats. The boundaries are important because candidates can be voted on only by the people who live in their district.
The new maps will first be used in November when all nine board seats are on the ballot.
Redrawing new election maps
Wake hired Mapfigure Consulting to draw up options for new maps. Mapfigure was asked to consider multiple criteria, including:
▪ Population equality between districts.
▪ Consideration of the Federal Voting Rights Act.
▪ Using existing districts as a starting point to try to minimize changes.
▪ Avoiding putting board members in the same district.
▪ Accounting for expected growth.
School leaders want to give the Wake County Board of Elections enough time to process the information before candidate filing starts in July. At least one school board member, Jim Martin, has said he won’t seek re-election.
Learn more
Go to www.wcpss.net/Page/50946 to learn more about the three proposed options for new Wake County school board election maps. The website includes presentations on each option and an interactive tool for searching which board member district you’d be in for each option.
In-person public meetings will be held Wednesday at Crossroads III, 111 Corning Road in Cary and Feb. 22 at Southeast Raleigh High School, 2600 Rock Quarry Road in Raleigh. The maps will be available for review starting at 6:30 p.m. with a formal presentation and question and answer session starting at 7:15 p.m.
A virtual public meeting will be held 6:30 p.m. on Feb. 23. Go to https://bit.ly/3GQQXKi to join.
This story was originally published February 15, 2022 at 1:50 PM.
