Buffalo Public Schools leaders hope a School Board redistricting process underway will come with less controversy than Common Council redistricting two years ago, which involved accusations of gerrymandering and exclusion, and culminated in a lawsuit by advocacy group Our City Action Buffalo.
According to Will Keresztes, Buffalo Schools’ chief of administration, public affairs and planning, and Mike Agostino, the Erie County Board of Elections official guiding the process, political maneuvering is not relevant in this case.
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“There’s no political motivation to even the people out,” Agostino told the nine-person redistricting committee during an orientation last month. It won’t affect the student population much, either, beyond – in a small proportion of cases – the board member who represents them.
“This has nothing to do with where students go to school,” Keresztes said.
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The committee, comprising citizens nominated by current School Board members, will meet for a public work session at 4 p.m. today at Waterfront Elementary, 95 Fourth St. The group will review the Board of Elections’ first draft to adjust the existing map to reflect Buffalo’s population shift since 2010.
The Buffalo School Board last redistricted in 2017, but it used the 2010 census. The board cannot use the city’s map because it has only six district representatives; the Common Council has nine. The School Board also has three at-large members.
The group will determine boundaries of oversight for each Buffalo School Board member so their districts are as balanced as possible.
Their finished product, if approved by the School Board in October, would be implemented when district representatives are publicly elected again in November 2025.
Board members serve three-year terms. All six district representatives were elected in 2022, but only one race was contested.
To set the stage, the Board of Elections has examined the existing School Board district boundaries and determined the total number of inhabitants – not voters or students – in each. Because the city has about 270,000 residents, an even split would be six districts of 46,392 people.
State law permits a standard deviation of 5%, or limits of 2.5% above or 2.5% below. Agostino said his aim for redistricting is to keep each district within a half-percent of each other.
Two districts should expect the most reshaping: The East District, whose board member is Kathy Evans-Brown, has grown the most since 2010. Its 51,696 residents are more than 11% above the standard. The Central District, represented by Paulette Woods, shrunk the most, to 43,115, about 7% below the standard. Coincidentally, the Central District has the most schools of the six, with 17.
Superintendent Tonja M. Williams will now cut costs over two years and, to account for deficits, commit between $70 million and $80 million of the district's $375 million in reserves for this budget cycle, said Buffalo Schools Chief Financial Officer Jim Barnes.
The only district that falls within the existing standard deviation is the North District, overseen by Cindi McEachon.
The redistricting committee includes Luis Rodriguez, Michael Darby, Louis Petrucci, Cedric Holloway, Khalil Cottman, Kenya House, Katie Rowan, Michael Graham and Christina Lyons.
While the committee’s chief task is to properly split the city’s population, some factors that may prove challenging are keeping entire neighborhoods in the same district and not disrupting current relationships between board members and their constituents.
Geographic distinctions in a “school choice” district can cause some confusion. For example, a student could live in the Ferry District but meet the criteria to take part in a horticulture program at McKinley High School (North) or test into the Arts Academy at Buffalo Academy for Visual & Performing Arts (Central). Determining the appropriate School Board member for these families – where they live vs. where their children attend school – can be case-by-case and may be dictated by the specific need. A “neighborhood schools” model would naturally reduce the uncertainty.
Keresztes said he had predicted Buffalo’s population shift would produce districts that looked much different. Instead, much of the adjustment can be done by tweaking the boundaries of the existing map.
“It wasn’t as big as we thought it was going to be,” he told the committee during its orientation.
Ben Tsujimoto can be reached at btsujimoto@buffnews.com, at (716) 849-6927 or on Twitter at @Tsuj10.