Following the population growth as shown in the 2020 United States Census, members of the Lamar County School District Board of Directors are looking at redistricting the board’s five districts to help ensure an approximate equal number of residents in each district.
The redistricting process is considered every 10 years, after each census. According to data from the 2020 census, Lamar County grew from 55,658 residents in 2010 to 64,222 residents in 2020, although not all of those residents fall under the Lamar County School District.
“The school board has to make sure they have an even representation in our district, since all of our school board members are elected,” school district superintendent Steven Hampton said. “So we worked with a demographer to draw some district lines to even out the population of our school board members’ representation.
“That is going to be on our website for public comment, so that people can look at that. Due to population shift over 10 years, they’re redrawing those lines so they’ll have equal representation across the board.”
School board officials are currently mulling over four or five possible plans for redistricting, all of which Hampton said provide only minor changes to school board lines.
“There are very little changes in that,” he said. “We have a demographer that came up with some scenarios to look at (different) possibilities of looking at that.
“Typically, in a county system, school boards will take on the board of supervisors’ boundaries, but because we have students in Pearl River County, we can’t do that. When we consolidated with Lumberton, we actually have part of our school district that reaches down into Pearl River County, and those students go to Lumberton, and so for those students we are not able to follow the same lines as the board of supervisors.”
The Lamar County School District Board of Directors is made up of the following districts:
- District A, represented by Deborah Pierce. District A consists of a portion of west Hattiesburg, particularly the area near Turtle Creek Mall, and stretches north to Mississippi 42 in Sumrall.
- District B, represented by Jim Braswell. District B stretches from Interstate 59 west to the Oak Grove area, and south to Purvis.
- District C, represented by Jeremy Chance. District C consists of the Purvis, Lumberton and Baxterville areas.
- District D, represented by Matt Mayo. District D stretches from the Pine Ridge area north to Bellevue.
- District E, represented by Jennie Hensarling. District E consists of the Sumrall and Oloh areas, and runs south past Pine Ridge.
Board members are expected to open the matter to public input before a decision is made on redrawing the district lines.
“I do know that they would like to get it out to have some type of public comment, so that if anyone has any issues with that process or where the lines are drawn, they have the opportunity to voice their concerns or approval,” Hampton said. “We’ll move from there – there’s nothing that says we have to do it by a certain date; it’s just that it has to be done every 10 years.
“That would be up to the board president, because that’s a board function, and I don’t have any say-so or input on how those lines are drawn.”
Hampton hopes to have the proposed redistricting maps on the school’s website, www.lamarcountyschools.org, in the near future.
“I’m having to try to get those cleaned up to get them presentable, because right now they’re low quality images,” he said. “I would like to be able to get them to where to where you’re on a tablet, you can zoom in and see where the boundaries are.
“So we’re working with our demographer to get us some more high-quality pictures to put on our website.”
