EXTRA CONTENT: Petition to change Knox School Board member districts hits brick wall

Read the petition and the response by clicking here.

The attorney for the Kentucky Board of Education ruled recently that no action would be taken on a citizen petition to reconfigure School Board Members districts in Knox County because there was insufficient information to make a definitive ruling on the issue.

In late March, over 300 residents in Knox County Board of Education District 5 signed a petition asking that the districts be changed because they were uneven based on population. Laura Clifton, a resident of Briarwood Trace subdivision, said she filed it officially in her name because she felt like her views were not being adequately represented on the school board.

Earlier this year, the Knox County Board of Education voted to end a long-standing reciprocal agreement with the Corbin Independent School System that allowed students from each district to attend the other at-will, without paying tuition. Clifton is directly impacted by the decision. She has a third-grade daughter already in Corbin Schools and two five-year old brothers getting ready to start Kindergarten.

"The reason I filed this is I felt I have not been represented properly on the school board," Clifton said. "In January, five people chose a different path for my family and 406 other children and I felt I was underrepresented at that meeting. It is a passionate issue for me."

Since, appeals and legal wrangling has resulted, in essence, in a one-year moratorium on the canceling of the reciprocal agreement.

In response to the petition, Kevin C. Brown, General Counsel for the Kentucky Board of Education, wrote that "reliable documentation" could not be obtained "that would enable the Commissioner to determine if the Knox County Board of Education member election district are unequally divided based upon population as required by statute."

"As a result, this matter is now closed and does not require consideration by the Kentucky Board of Education."

Brown said he was unable to determine, through the most current Census data available, whether the districts were roughly equal in population. The School Board Member districts do not align with magisterial districts for the county making comparisons unreliable. Population figures for magisterial districts from 1988 and 1992 were provided as part of the response.

Brown did find that registered voters in Knox County Board of Education member districts varied "from 13.44 percent to 25.46 percent, a variance of 13 percent.

"However, this data does not reflect a percentage of population in each voter district, only percentage of registered voters."
According to a report generated by Brown, there are 4,138 registered voters in school board District 1, 2,505 in District 2, 3,166 in District 3, 4,083 in District 4, and 4,745 in District 5. The last is of most interest to Clifton and local businessman Jim Lacefield, who has made no bones about his intention to run for the seat in 2012, and who led the charge to file the petition.

"We are very disappointed. They said they had insufficient information. They got their information from the County Clerk and the school district. If it isn’t enough, why isn’t it enough?"

Lacefield noted that it would be reasonable to assume that more populated district would have more registered voters. He said the differences, like District 5 having almost twice the number of registered voters as District 2, shows inequality.

"We want it to be as the law was written, that way you have equal representation throughout the entire county," Lacefield said. "We don’t want to give anyone the opportunity to strategically make one district smaller than another to help out any individual candidate, nor do we want larger districts."

Clifton points out that state laws provides for the state Board of Education to intervene and force reconfiguration of districts if they are determined to be unequal, and even can compel special elections to rectify any problems.
Current District 5 Board Member Clarence Brown did not return a call seeking comment on the issue.

But Knox County Schools Superintendent Walter T. Hulett said Tuesday that the Board of the Education may perhaps take a look at the districts once figures from the 2010 Census are available, but is under no mandate to do so. He denied that the districts were cynically drawn to favor certain candidates, saying they were in place well before he became Superintendent four years ago.

"As far as anyone can tell me, they have been in place for many years," Hulett said. "I doubt the Board of Education 30 years ago would have known anything about what is going on right now … That is sort of unfounded."

Hulett said there have been two rounds of school board elections since he became Superintendent, including one in District 5, both without complaint. He points to the recent decision to end a reciprocal agreement with Corbin as the impetus behind the petition.

"It’s born purely out of that," Hulett said. "We’ve had two rounds of board elections and it was never mentioned. If they were that concerned about representation at that time, why not take action before that election? … It was never mentioned before this situation occurred."

Clifton doesn’t deny that the reciprocal agreement fight "brought attention" to the issue and caused local citizens to take a closer look at the Knox County School System. She said a reexamination of the districts is vital because of a population boom in the Corbin and Lynn Camp area of Knox County. The spike can be attributed to an "enterprise zone" designation given to the area for a ten-year period, which ended in 2007. It allowed materials for homes in the area to be procured tax-free.

"The petition was formed in accordance with the law, but the law failed us," Clifton said Tuesday. "Why else would the law be set up if this wasn’t a problem?"

"They don’t want to follow the process."

Clifton said she believes the Kentucky Department of Education merely used having insufficient data as an "excuse" for inaction.

"They want us to follow the law, but they don’t want to follow it."

Hulett noted that while the law does require approximately equal districts, there could be variations based on other factors like how many registered voters there are in a district.