State Education Board names Pine Bluff School District School Board Zones

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On June 3, 2022, Secretary Johnny Key completed his review of the Pine Bluff School District (PBSD) board zone proposals and approved the proposal labeled Scenario 5.

“Scenario 5 grew from the original work of Arkansas GIS and incorporated valuable feedback from the community. The new zones are well within the allowable population variation for electoral zones, and the boundary lines are clear,” Key explained. 

On April 5, 2022, in a school board zone informational session held for the PBSD community, Shelby Johnson, State Geographic Information officer was in attendance to explain the school board zone redistricting process, and share insight about the three school board zone redistricting scenarios, and to answer questions.

The district provided an opportunity for the community to see detailed maps and information about each scenario and to vote on their preference for school board zone scenarios. The information was presented on the district website under the Community Resources tab. 

At the request of community members, Shelby Johnson, State Geographic Information Officer, took another look at the data and developed two (2) additional scenarios–Scenario 4 and Scenario 5. Scenario 4 was developed in direct response to a request made by some community members to develop a specific scenario based on what they offered as a possible option. Mr. Johnson developed this option but it was found to create variances in population that didn’t meet redistricting standards. This configuration of the zones would result in under and/or over-representation. 

“While I appreciate the submission from members of the community of what was labeled Scenario 4, upon analysis, it did not meet the muster for redistricting standards. The population deviations of that proposal ranged from -76% to +42%, which far exceeded acceptable limits,” Key added. “The boundary lines of that  submission also gave the appearance of gerrymandering, which we must absolutely avoid.” 

Scenario 5 was developed as a result of researching the community members’ requests to design Scenario 4. This new scenario, which would become known as Scenario 5, met legally accepted redistricting standards resulting in another viable option. After allowing additional weeks for community review, vote,  and feedback, Scenario 5 received the majority of the community votes and was selected as the school board zone map by Secretary Johnny Key acting in his capacity as the PBSD board.