Fort Smith School Board discusses possible rezoning

FORT SMITH — Residents in the School District may find themselves with a different School Board as a result of the 2020 census.

Attorney Marshall Ney, legal counsel for the district, told the board Monday Arkansas law could require a school district with a minority population of 10% or more to elect members from five or seven single-member zones or from five single-member zones and two at large.

Zena Featherston Marshall, executive director of communication and community partnerships for the district, said the School Board has members from four zones, in addition to three at-large positions. The members all have three-year terms.

Dalton Person, an at-large School Board member, expressed his support for all seven board seats being up for election next year, with the board consisting of five zoned and two at-large positions.

“So we’re looking at some pretty substantial changes in terms of our makeup over a pretty accelerated timeline, but that’s where we’re at with the census right now,” Person said.

The School Board’s decision on how to elect board members would need to take place at least 120 days before the annual election in 2022, Ney said. It would also, with the Sebastian County Election Commission’s approval, divide the School District into five or seven single-member zones in accordance with the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965. The boundaries for the zones will be based on information from the census, and the zones themselves will have “substantially equal population.”

The law also requires the School Board to file a copy of its plan to divide the district with the Sebastian County Clerk’s Office at least 90 days before the filing deadline for the annual school election, according to Ney. A new School Board would then be elected after the rezoning.

Ney said the new members would determine how long the terms of their respective positions would be “by lot” at their first meeting. This is to ensure an equal number of positions are filled each year and no more than two members’ terms expire each year, to the extent possible.

“Translation of that is that if you follow the directive in this statute, the slate is cleaned,” Ney said. “Everyone runs for election, and then at the first meeting after the election, then everybody draws straws, and you may

get a five-year term, you may get a one-year term, you may get something in between. And then based on that, we start having new elections on that basis where they are staggered.”

The law allows a School Board going to five single-member zones and two at-large positions to fill the at-large positions by drawing lots from among its members.

A school district’s failure to comply with the law could cause the state Division of Elementary and Secondary Education to withhold 20% of the annual allocation of state money to the district.

Terry Morawski, district superintendent, said the district hired the Monticello-based company EFS GeoTechnologies to provide an updated digital representation of its four zones, along with the district as a whole. The district would also work with EFS to present the School Board with zoning options.

Morawski said the board would have to authorize an arrangement by Nov. 2 before the school election.

The deadline for the Election Commission to approve the new zones and the School District to submit the necessary material to the County Clerk’s Office is Dec. 2.

“Any of you and anyone in our community that might want to be part of that election would know by Dec. 2 at the latest what the updated zones are and the configuration and the whole plan at the same place,” Morawski told the board.

Thomas Saccente can be reached by email at [email protected].