Central Bucks voters protest plan for redistricting voting regions for school board
More than 3,670 residents of the Central Bucks School District have signed a petition filed Friday in Bucks County Court opposing a plan to realign the district's voting regions.
They want the court to consider instead a plan that would split district voters into three regions represented by three board members each, rather than nine regions in the district proposal. The nine-district plan, as first reported by this news organization in November, would result in some residents not being able to vote for their representative in the upcoming elections.
The residents have formed an organization called “CBSD Fair Votes" to fight the majority on the current school board’s plan to realign the voting districts into nine districts that lawyers for CBSD Fair Votes say are unconstitutional under both the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the Pennsylvania Public School Code.
The group’s attorneys, Brendan Flynn and Theresa Golding of the firm of Curtin & Heefner, held a press conference outside the Bucks County Justice Center, joined by about 30 residents who withstood the cold, windy weather to voice their support for the new plan.
The Central Bucks School District needs to realign its voting districts because of unequal representation on the board. Due to population shifts in the 2020 Census, some board members were representing more people than others.
Golding said that the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment requires that regions be of nearly equal population so that each person’s vote maybe given equal weight in the election of (school) board directors.
Central Bucks' plan for voters
In November, the majority on the school board voted to petition the court for a plan proposed by school Superintendent Abram Lucabaugh and district Solicitor Jeffrey Garton that would have resulted in about 6,000 residents of New Britain Borough and the 5th Precinct in Doylestown Township not being able to vote in this year’s school board election since they would be placed in another district represented by Dr. Mariam Mahmud whose term isn't up for re-election until 2025.
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While Republicans have a slight majority over Democrats in Central Bucks, Flynn said that under that plan proposed by the school board, these map lines “would essentially lock in a seven to two Republican advantage on the board for at least the next decade.”
Members of the Fair Votes group said the majority on the board voted on the plan, with just minimal notice to the public. They called the district's plan a form of gerrymandering.
An alternative plan
Tracy Suits, a former school board member, said the Fair Votes group then worked with an expert "who created several maps which we reviewed and selected the three region map as the best option for representation and fairness" and more evenly distributed the board seats. Each voter in each region would be able to vote for as many representatives are are up for election in their district in a given year, Flynn explained.
Contacted Friday afternoon, Garton said that when the nine region plan was developed, he and the superintendent couldn’t split municipal voting districts in half and that they wanted to keep the school district regions within their municipal boundaries.
“We wanted to keep the numbers together as best we could,” he said. But he said a three region plan would also be a legal way to realign the voting districts.
The Central Bucks School District has dealt with several contentious issues since the pandemic started, including masking of children in school and more recently whether certain books should be banned from the district’s school libraries and whether teachers can decorate their classrooms to support gay rights for students or advocate for other causes.
CB controversy brings out opposition
Robert Arnold who attended the press conference and resides in the district said he thought the the majority on the board voted for the proposed realignment plan to keep control.
“For me it’s about banning books. To me, the book banning is a huge risk to democracy,” he said, adding that many residents who are Republican also joined in petitioning for the new plan. “The majority (of residents) do not want books banned.”
The Fair Votes Group wants to have its petition presented at the hearing on the district’s plan scheduled for Feb. 9 and to intervene to comment on the district’s plan at that time. The timing is important because candidates for this year's primary election can start collecting nominating petitions on Feb. 14.
"Gerrymandering has been used by partisan groups to disenfranchise voters," said Susan Eggleston of New Britain Borough, who said she hoped the court would take into consideration the wishes of the 3,700 people over the six memmbers of the school board who favored the original plan.
Fair Votes member Shannon Sticker said the group went door to door getting people to sign the petition and that Republicans as well as Democrats said they wanted the voting districts to be fairly divided.
Both Golding and Garton said they were not sure as yet which Bucks County judge would hear the petitions.
Reporter Jo Ciavaglia contributed to this report.
This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Central Bucks residents petition Bucks County Court to redo voter map
