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District approves changes in trustee zones
Significant changes in the trustee zones for the Mountain Home School District have been approved by the State Board of Education.
Literally thousands of voters in the district will find themselves in new zones when the next school district election is held.
"We started this process in 2000," said Supt. Jerrie LeFevre. "The law requires that you revisit the trustee zones after every census, and it took some time to work out some of the issues and get through it."
Each trustee zone must be within 10 percent of the same population as any other zone, and over the years some of the zones had grown faster than others. The last time the district adjusted its zones was in the 1960s "and (former superintendent) Leo Miller told me the way they did it was having the student government kids go out and physically count the patrons in a door-to-door survey," LeFevre said.
The school district hired an independent firm out of Idaho State University this time to help draw up the new trustee boundaries. The ISU-based organization had an extensive computer data-base of census figures for the county, which district officials helped update with the latest city and county information concerning all the new subdivisions that have been built.
"The problem," LeFevre said, "was how to divide the base," since the district wanted the base to be represented in two zones, "and how to give everybody a piece of the town."
The new boundaries, in the base area, put everything northeast of Gunfighter and Mellen streets in Zone 1, and the rest of the base in the second zone.
In town, there also were several significant changes. For example, the old line between zones 1 and 5 was N. Third East Street, but under the redistricting it was moved to N. 6th East St. That will result in an odd anomaly for voters in that "corridor," who did not vote for a trustee last year (no one was up for election), and who won't vote for one again this year (no one in the new zone is up for election).
Other changes occurred in the central "downtown" area of the city and the part of town below Sixth South Street on the east side of the tracks, which went from Zone 3 to Zone 4.
And while each of the zones is now in conformance with the new state law with regard to roughly similar population, the geographic areas are considerably different. Trustee Luise House, for example, has only a small geographic area, while Trustee Jim Alexander "has an area larger than Rhode Island," covering not only the northern part of the city but the entire Pine/Featherville/Atlanta area as well.
The state board gave its required approval for the changes at its last meeting.
The polling location for all district elections, regardless of zone, will now be in the district's new administrative offices at 470 N. 3rd East St. (the old McKenna High School building).