Wake school board approves new voting districts, seeks to extend length of terms
The Wake County school board approved a plan Tuesday that could change how its members are elected and how long they’ll serve in those positions.
The school board voted 8-1 to approve new redistricting maps that will be used to elect all nine board members, starting this November. But the new maps also come with a resolution asking the Wake County Board of Elections to approve the school board’s proposal to return to four-year, staggered terms instead of everyone remaining with two-year, non-staggered terms.
Under the resolution, four school board members would be elected this fall to four-year terms instead of two-year terms. The other five board districts would still be on this fall’s ballot for two-year terms but would switch to four-year terms in the 2024 election.
Elections officials have already approved the request from the Wake County Board of Commissioners to return to four-year, staggered terms.
“When you have a stagger, you have people who have institutional knowledge who stay with a four-year term,” school board chairwoman Lindsay Mahaffey said in an interview after the vote. “Otherwise having all nine seats up every four years, you’re not getting that consistency and that institutional knowledge retained necessarily.”
School board used to have four-year terms
For decades, Wake school board members were elected to staggered, four-year terms.
Typically, elected bodies adopt their own redistricting maps. But in 2013, the General Assembly redrew the school board’s election districts and later adopted those maps as well for commissioners.
The legislature’s plan still allowed, though, for four-year, staggered terms.
In 2016, the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals declared the legislature’s maps for Wake to be unconstitutional while leaving the rest of the law in place. This led to a federal judge issuing an interim court order that switched the board seats to two-year, non-staggered terms until either state lawmakers approved a new plan or the 2020 Census took place.
Lawmakers haven’t adopted new election plans for Wake or approved a request from the school board to return to four-year, staggered terms.
Who gets four-year terms this fall
The school district’s law firm has said that the school board can return to the four-year, staggered terms but the decision rests with elections officials in the absence of legislative action.
Under the proposal, Districts 1, 2, 7 and 9 would be elected to four-year terms this fall. The school board is recommending them because state lawmakers had shortened the terms for those seats by a year in a 2013 law as part of the effort to move the district off of elections in odd-numbered years.
The board proposes Districts 3, 4, 5, 6 and 8 stay on two-year terms this election cycle before returning to four-year terms in 2024. That’s suggested because those five seats had their terms extended a year in the 2013 law to accommodate the switch to even-year elections.
Candidate filing won’t begin until July 1. But several Republican candidates have already announced they plan to run on issues such as not mandating face masks, requiring teachers provide advance copies of lesson plans to parents. and fighting what they say is Critical Race Theory being taught in schools.
The school board is officially non-partisan, but it has a Democratic majority.
See which district you’re in
Every 10 years, the school system uses the latest Census data to draw new election boundaries for the board seats. The maps need to be redrawn in part to balance population disparities that have grown between the nine districts since the 2010 Census.
The school board hired Mapfigure Consulting to draw up maps while taking into account requests like not putting incumbents in the same district. Board members requested changes to the three maps that were developed, leading to the version voted on Tuesday.
Board member Karen Carter was the only “no” vote, saying she was concerned one of the last minute-changes approved Tuesday would lead to a population imbalance in one of the lower-growth districts.
Go to https://arcg.is/1PX0yr0 to view the maps and to search by address to identify voting district.
This story was originally published March 15, 2022 at 8:19 PM.
