Indianapolis Recorder, Indianapolis, Marion County, 11 January 1992 — Page 2

THE tNOtAMAPOLB WtCOUPBR

SATURDAY, JANUARY 11.1W2

SPECIAL REPORT

Indianapolis Public Scbools Redistricting

Redrawing IPS districts draws disputes

By CHKRRYL FLOYD-MILLER Slefr Writer Should « school board be composed of professional people with business acumen or should it be made up of people who know fee community where they have lived and wotked all their lives? According to the Rev. Thomas L Brown, an Indianapolis Public Schools board member, recent conflicts in redrawing the boundaries tor the live IPS districts have raised that very question. Brown said at the Dec. 18,1991 meeting of die IPS Board of Commissioners that IPS Superintendent Dr. Shirt B. Gilbert II proposed a map of new boundaries. But Brown said the Dec. 18 map was not the first map given to the board. “1 arrived at an earlier (in December) session of the board late, but when the session was finished, and we were outside in the lobby of the Education Services Center, Dr. Gilbert put another map in my hand and said, 'Here’s the new map,"* Brown said. Because the map Brown said he and other board members allegedly received prior to Dec. 18 proposed to make only one IPS district (represented by board President Dr. Mary F,. Busch) predominantly black, Brown decided to draw a map of his own. He said he called on the legislative expertise of State Rep. William Crawford and the demographic knowledge of WTLC-FM General Manager Amos Brown to construct a new version of district boundaries. And he arrived at the Dec. 18 meeting ready to present his rcdistricting ideas to the board. Brown’s map showed S8.1 percent representation in Busch's district (2), S5.4 percent in Hazel Stewart's district (S) and 44.5 percent in Stephen J. Hyatt’s district (3). But when he arrived at the meeting. Brown said, a different map was presented to the board. And Crawford and Brown rejected that map for different reasons: ■ The map presented at the Dec. 18 meeting would make two districts, District 2, represented by Busch, and District 5, represented by Hazel Stewart, majority black. Busch’s district would be 60 percent black and Stewart’s district, 51 percent black. Fiftyone percent is not an “effective majority," according to both Crawford and Brown. At any time, Brown said, the numbers could shift and blacks would no longer be a majority in the district. ■ The population numbers IPS officials used to construct the new map were total population figures, which Mark Goff, assistant director for IPS School/Community Relations, said the Department of Education instructed IPS to use. What they should have used are voting age population figures, which Brown and Crawford used. ■ There is also a clause in the Voting Rights Act of 1965, amended by Congress in 1982, that may require IPS to have at least two majority black districts. “The law says you should look for ways to ensure a predominantly black district, where there is a sufficient number of minorities to compose a district,” said Crawford. But Busch said the state did not inform the board of those requirements. "The state never told us that, when we took the guidelines that we were to use to draw boundaries for the district, nowhere had the state mentioned that,” Busch said. According to Gary Pelico, the acting director of development for IPS, the Department of Education gave the following rules for mapping out a district: ■ No splitting of voting precincts. ■ Adhering to natural boundaries (interstates, rivers, etc.) ■ Area in a district must be contiguous, “ft has to all be one piece of a a puzzle,” Pelico said. “You can't have one part of a district in one place and another small little part somewhere else." ■ The five IPS districts must be within a certain percentage of each other. “Aside from the fact that each district must be as compact as possible in population, the largest district cannot exceed the smallest by five percent,” Pelico said. And according to Pelico, IPS did meet the stale requirements for redistricting.

Donald Payton, District 4

Hazel Stewart, District S

Dr. Mary E. Busch, District 2

Rev. Thomas L. Brown, member* at-large

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