Early drafts of DISD’s redistricted trustee maps could get district sued, trustee says | Website Hosting Plans

Proposed new Dallas ISD trustee districts are creating tension over how to divvy up West Dallas voters and some school board members are worried that Latinos are being shortchanged in the whole redistricting process.

After reviewing preliminary drafts prepared by a team of lawyers and a demographer, DISD trustees declared at a Thursday board meeting that more revisions and clarification are needed on the proposed district maps.

Just like at the statehouse, school districts across Texas are engaged in redistricting — the process by which trustees work to redraw their own districts to accommodate population growth and demographic changes over the last decade.

The process involves some complicated maneuvering and math, subtracting people from districts that grew significantly and adding them to areas with less growth.

The goal is to have the largest district within 10% of the population of the smallest one, an objective that becomes a moving target throughout the redrawing process as each district changes.

In the last decade, the trustee districts with the greatest growth were mostly clustered in the southern and eastern sections of the school system. DISD added more than 100,000 people of voting age, with more than half of that influx identifying as Hispanic.

Trustees reviewed three initial maps after hosting community meetings that gathered feedback from residents.

“What I’m confused by in all three of these plans is why none of these plans respect the growth of the Latino vote and the Latino voters in Dallas ISD,” trustee Joe Carreón said. “My expectation is that any maps provided to us, even in draft form, should be able to stand on their legs legally. This isn’t it.”

Carreón pointed to one of the proposed maps for District 8, his district, which is located mostly in West Dallas but reaches through to a small portion of east Dallas. Under current maps, District 8 serves a population that is nearly two-thirds Hispanic.

But under the draft plans presented Thursday, just about one-third of the citizens of voting age in Carreón’s area would be Hispanic.

Carreón’s district is known as an Hispanic opportunity district, or an area where Hispanic residents have the opportunity to influence the outcome of the election, the trustee said after the meeting on Thursday.

“It’s important to make sure that the board of trustees actually reflects the city that it represents,” Carreón told The Dallas Morning News. “We know how even when you have the population present, gerrymandering can dilute the vote or the representation of certain communities.”

Carreón said he believes his colleagues all want to maintain existing opportunity districts for both Latino and Black residents. Trustee Dustin Marshall threw his support behind Carreón’s arguments on Thursday and expressed his own dismay over the initial maps.

It appeared to him like significant efforts went into ensuring that African American opportunity districts remained, but little work was invested in the Hispanic opportunity districts, Marshall said.

“I would throw all three of these away and start over because there are much broader concerns than those that are reflected in these maps,” Marshall said. “I think all three of these maps would get us sued.”

Trustee Joyce Foreman pushed back on the assertion that Hispanics would be negatively affected under the proposed remapping. She said trustees should consider the total Hispanic voting age population of the three Hispanic opportunity districts rather than just the number of Hispanic citizens of voting age in the districts. In one of the proposals, each of the three districts’ number of residents of voting age would be greater than 55% Hispanic.

“If those aren’t Hispanic opportunity districts, I don’t know what they look like,” she said.

But unauthorized immigrants of voting age, as well as unregistered voters, could not vote in trustee elections.

Trustee Justin Henry later asked for clarification on whether citizen voting age population or total voting age population matters most when redrawing the new maps and implored his trustees to pick one as a priority.

Further strife emerged Thursday over who would represent West Dallas. Trustee Maxie Johnson, whose district currently includes a small portion of West Dallas near downtown and trails further south past Lancaster, said he had heard from dissatisfied community members about the need for Black representation in the area.

“I want it to be known that the Black community of West Dallas is offended,” Johnson said. “I’m not going to let Black folks be pushed out of my community where I’m pastor.”

Under the proposed maps presented Thursday, Johnson said he would give up most of the West Side to Carreón’s district, but kept a small portion that includes Pinkston High School, where the student population is more than a quarter Black.

Henry emphasized the short amount of time the district has left to work with on redistricting.

“This is another meeting that we’re leaving and it sounds like we might be starting over,” Henry said.

DISD will move forward with more community meetings as trustees submit their own map drafts to the team overseeing the redrawing. Residents can also provide input via an online survey. Trustees expect to approve the final maps in mid-December that will go into effect for the 2022 election cycle.

In Austin, state lawmakers are engaged in a similar battle to redraw district lines as people of color have driven the majority of population growth in the last 10 years. Still, critics say the newly drawn maps don’t account for the fact that people of color make up 3.8 million of the 4 million new Texas residents.

The DMN Education Lab deepens the coverage and conversation about urgent education issues critical to the future of North Texas.

The DMN Education Lab is a community-funded journalism initiative, with support from The Beck Group, Bobby and Lottye Lyle, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, The Meadows Foundation, Solutions Journalism Network, Southern Methodist University and Todd A. Williams Family Foundation. The Dallas Morning News retains full editorial control of the Education Lab’s journalism.

Early drafts of DISD’s redistricted trustee maps could get district sued, trustee says