Committee completes redistricting plan

Members seek better representation of marginalized groups in San Marcos CISD

In a process that now dates to the early 1990s, there is a committee working here with the aim of offering a redistricting plan for the San Marcos Consolidated Independent School District. At issue is rethinking the structure of the board of trustees from the current format—five single-member district representatives and two at-large trustees—to a new format—seven single- member district representatives.

The SMCISD Redistricting Committee said this could lead to better representation of marginalized groups and better voter turnout for district elections.

“A large portion of the minority weren’t represented with district representation, so there’s a whole group that was kind of lumped into the at-large,” Eduardo Rios, a chair for the redistricting committee, said. “Whereas every other district had boundaries and folks that can vote, this now allows for everybody in the district to have a single representative for the school board. Rios added that the new district map is in line with the elementary school zoning.

Rio said the committee will be presenting their new plan to the SMCISD board-of-trustees at their regularly scheduled meeting September 18. He said if the plan is approved by the board, there must be some public hearings and some administrative work to make it official before the next election. He added that, traditionally, there hasn’t been a large voter turnout for school board elections. He said he’s hoping that since everyone can vote for a specific representative for their own district, voter turnout will increase.

Rios said the current at-large trustees— Mari Salmi and Anne Halsey—will have their own districts and will have the option to run as a single-member trustee for those districts in the next election cycle.

Rios said there was a lawsuit in the 90s with the goal of better representation of minority groups amongst the SMCISD board of trustees. At that time, he said there were seven at-large trustees, and the lawsuit hoped to change the configuration to 7 single- member districts—a representative for each part of town. He said the lawsuit was settled by forming the current board of trustees with five single-district members and two at-large.

Rios said in the fall of 2021, the committee was formed with seven volunteers, each appointed by a trustee, to look into a board of seven single-member representatives and what that would look like.

He said the direction of the committee was changed in early 2022 to make the current composition (5 single-members and two at-large members) constitutional by the next election, as based on the 2020 Census data, the deviation was over 10% for minority distribution. He said the committee adjusted the maps, and our current configuration is constitutional.

“After the elections, and we got two new people,” Rios said. “They decided last fall to resurrect it [the redistricting committee], and … start talking about it again.”

Rios said the committee began to look at a seven single-member configuration again in the Fall of 2022. He said the guidelines from the trustees were to create seven single-member districts, try to keep neighborhoods in the same district and try to use the elementary school zones as a guide.

“Last Monday, we had gotten it down to two maps. Both of them were 7-0 [seven single-member representatives] and both of them were constitutionally correct with the distribution. Both of them had less than the 10% deviation required,” Rios said. “We got down to one map, and now we’re going with that map as the committee recommendation for the district to move forward and create the 7-0 member district.”

For more information, go to this link smcisd. net/Page/5122.

The Sept. 18 San Marcos Consolidated Independent School Board of Trustees meeting will be held at 6 p.m. at San Marcos High School, or it can be watched at smcisd. net/Page/320.