Republican members of the Cobb legislative delegation have filed a bill that would redistrict Cobb Board of Education posts along similar lines recommended recently by the school board’s GOP majority.
State Rep. Ginny Ehrhart of West Cobb filed HB 1028 on Wednesday (you can read it here) as the Cobb legislative delegation—which has a one-member Democratic majority—was meeting over reapportionment.
Co-sponsors of the bill include East Cobb Republicans John Carson, Matt Dollar and Don Parsons.
The delegation is carving out Cobb commission and school board lines for the next decade following the 2020 Census.
The local reapportionment process is usually completed within a county’s delegation before being submitted as a bill that must pass the full legislature, typically in consent fashion on what’s called a local calendar.
Instead, Ehrhart’s legislation will start in the House, after getting a first reading and committee assignment next week.
(PLEASE NOTE: The process of redistricting elected school board posts has nothing to do with the boundaries of school attendance zones, which are drawn by school district administrative staff and are done mainly to balance out school capacity.)
For the last three years, the Cobb school board has held a 4-3 Republican majority (after the GOP previously enjoyed a 6-1 advantage), and has been roiled in a number of controversies that generally have fallen along partisan lines.
State Rep. Erick Allen, a Smyrna Democrat and the Cobb delegation chairman, proposed a draft map of Cobb school board posts earlier this month that would make few changes to the current lines.
The four Republicans on the Cobb school board approved a map designed to maintain their majority. The map would take out most of the East Cobb portion of Post 6 that currently includes the Walton and Wheeler high school clusters.
That seat is currently held by first-term Democrat Charisse Davis, who under the GOP map would be drawn in the same post as Jaha Howard, another first-term Democrat who represents Post 2 in the Smyrna area.
The school board’s recommendation is advisory, but Ehrhart’s bill follows similar lines.
Post 6 would be centered in the Smyrna-Vinings area, keeping several precincts in the Powers Ferry and Terrell Mill corridors.
The Walton-Wheeler zones would mostly be shifted to Post 5, which covers the Lassiter and Pope attendance zones.
That seat is held by Republican vice chairman David Banks.
The new lines, however they might be drawn, will take effect for 2022 elections that include three school board seats.
They are Post 2 (Howard has declared his intent to run for state school superintendent); Post 6 (Davis has not announced her plans) and Post 4 in Northeast Cobb (incumbent David Chastain has said he will be seeking another term).
The Cobb delegation also will be redrawing the four district lines for the Cobb Board of Commissioners.
On Tuesday, the commission’s three Democrats voted in favor of a map drawn by Allen that makes minimal changes to the current lines.
But the two Republicans, JoAnn Birrell of Northeast Cobb and Keli Gambrill of North Cobb, voted against that map.
They are both up for re-election this year. Birrell said she does not support the proposed map because it has taken out some of her East Cobb precincts.
Like the school board’s map, the commissioners’ action is “more of an endorsement vote,” deputy county manager Jimmy Gisi said during the Tuesday meeting.
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