Gainesville's proposed redistricting lines could have a greater impact on city school board members than City Council members.

Gainesville City Council members looked over the initial proposed map, based on 2010 census numbers, at a meeting Wednesday.

The map included dramatic changes to several districts, particularly Districts 3 and 4.

Gainesville Board of Education members Willie Mitchell, Delores Diaz and Maria Calkins attended the meeting, along with attorney Cory Kirby from Harben, Hartley & Hawkins, the Gainesville law firm that serves as the board's legal counsel.

Unlike City Council's at-large elections, school board members are elected by individual districts, not citywide.

The new lines would take effect after Jan. 1 and would not impact November elections for City Council or school board members.

The maps are the first drafts of what could be Gainesville's new district, but plans are still open to change depending on population size, demographics and talks between the council and school board.

"We've only seen the preliminary plan, a single plan that the city presented, and we need to take a look at it and see if that would suit our needs or not," Diaz said.

If school board voters are "drawn" into new districts, they would vote for a different school board member than in previous years, said attorney Phil Hartley, also from Harben, Hartley & Hawkins.

"It is probably more important to the board members and to the Board of Education how the lines are drawn because it has a bigger effect on their election process than it does on the City Council's," Hartley said.

The school board and the council want to use the same lines to draw their districts within the city if possible, schools Superintendent Merrianne Dyer said.

"They could be different, but the goal is to be the same," Dyer said.

Diaz represents District 4, one of the districts that has changed most. District 4 experienced a boom in population in the past 10 years from 5,172 to 10,474. While Gainesville has grown overall in population since 2000, District 4 now dwarfs the other districts.

Diaz's district and the neighboring District 3 contain a large portion of minority voters in Gainesville, Diaz said.

"If the city plan is the one that's adopted, Ward 3 will gain some of the Hispanic population from my ward. But like I say, it appears the demographics will remain the same, pretty much," she said.

The Department of Justice must review and approve district maps as part of the federal Voting Rights Act. The review ensures that new lines don't weaken the strength of minority votes.

While Diaz said she doesn't speak for the rest of the board, she believes the school board will continue to use district voting, and said she would prefer to continue the district voting even if the districts change.

"I don't think we would entertain the idea of being elected at-large. We want to make sure that each of the wards has full representation on the board," she said.