Without soliciting any community feedback and with limited discussion among the school board members, the school district proposed and the school board voted to approve (6-3) a new regional map. This map was seriously flawed:
The proposal takes away the voting rights of two precincts for 6 years (voted for school board directors in 2019, should be voting in 2023 under current map, won't vote until 2025 under proposed map).
It gerrymanders the school district to create 7 strong republican districts and only 2 strong democratic districts.
On December 8th the school district, without telling the Democratic members of the school board, filed their map with the Bucks County Court of Common Pleas.
We oppose this map (first one below) and have taken steps to intervene.
Proposed Gerrymandered Map
Fair and Equitable Map
To inform the judge handling the review of this map, we filed a petition to consider a fair alternative map (second one above).
The map we filed with the court:
Is a three-region map, with three school board directors in each region.
Does not create Democratic leaning districts but rather fair, non-gerrymandered districts, and is reflective of the registration of the school district (D: 48.3%, R: 51.6%. Note: Independents are not considered in this analysis).
Does not disenfranchise any voters by taking away their right to vote in 2023.
Gives us a fighting chance to win elections.
We believe that in side-by-side evaluation of the two maps, our regional map is clearly superior and the only map that provides voters in Central Bucks School District with fair elections, which is a protected right under the PA Constitution.