Cobb schools bring disciplinary charges in anti-Semitic incidents

Cobb County School District superintendent Chris Ragsdale said Thursday that student disciplinary charges have been brought in anti-Semitic incidents at two East Cobb high schools, but he didn’t elaborate.

Ragsdale said during a Cobb Board of Education work session Thursday afternoon that student disciplinary procedures required by state law preclude him from providing further information.

He also asked school board members to refrain from making public comments about the situation unless and until after any students subjected to disciplinary action would have an opportunity to appeal.

“The district does not and will not tolerate hate in any form,” Ragsdale said, reading from prepared remarks.

Before a public comment period at the work session, board chairman Randy Scamihorn said he was preparing a resolution condemning anti-Semitism but that it wasn’t ready.

There was nothing specific on the board’s meeting agendas about the anti-Semitic incidents at Pope and Lassiter.

Ragsdale’s comments came after several public commenters, including two rabbis in East Cobb, were critical of the district for its response to swastika and “Heil Hitler” graffiti found at Pope and Lassiter high schools over the last two weeks.

Those incidents also took place amid more general vandalism in lavatories as part of a social media stunt on the Tik Tok application that’s spread nationwide.

He said the district’s disciplinary recommendation is “sufficiently significant that the board’s members could likely hear it on appeal.

“I realize this may have begun as some kind of social media dare,” Ragsdale continued, saying that while such incidents are extremely rare in a school district with more than 100,000 students, “this district refuses to dismiss this incident as as some kind of prank.”

Those were his first public remarks since the incidents took place at Pope and Lassiter. Jewish and community leaders decried an earlier district reference only to “hate speech” and a similar response from Pope principal Thomas Flugum that didn’t specify anti-Semitism.

Lassiter principal Chris Richie did specify anti-Semitism in his letter to the school community, but Jewish leaders and community figures speaking before the board Thursday continued to express displeasure.

Rabbi Daniel Dorsch of Congregation Etz Chaim in East Cobb said he was speaking on behalf of several Jewish organizations that were “united in our disappointment” that “the school’s response specifically failed to address the hate by name—anti-Semitism, hatred against Jews.

“The failure by the administration to label it by name has left us feeling unheard and unseen.”

Rachel Barich, a past president of Temple Kol Emeth in East Cobb, recalled an incident when her brother experienced an anti-Semitic vandalism of his locker after his Bar Mitzvah. That prompted their parents to pull them out of public schools in the St. Louis area.

“The district has a responsibility. There is much more work to be done,” said Barich, whose children are Cobb public school graduates.

“No child should attend a school full of hate and none of us can continue to believe that the problem has gone away.”

Scamihorn attended a Yom Kippur service last week at Kol Emeth at the invitation of Rabbi Larry Sernovitz, who thanked him at the board meeting. They have been discussing a possible resolution.

But Sernovitz also demanded specifics of what the school district would be undertaking along safety and educational lines.

“Right now, some of our students don’t feel safe in schools in Cobb County,” Sernovitz said. “It starts with swastikas and grows from there.”

Cobb schools parent Keith Hanks referenced the 1915 lynching of Leo Frank, a Jewish pencil factory manger, at a spot near what is now Roswell Road and Frey’s Gin Road in Marietta.

That’s the only known lynching of a Jew in American history, and in 2018, former Kol Emeth Rabbi Steven Lebow led the rededication of a memorial to Frank as he continues exoneration efforts.

“The wounds of Leo Frank still ring true today,” Hanks said. “Cobb does not get the luxury to kick the can [down the road] because of its past.”

Scamihorn said he wants to discuss his resolution with colleagues and “take the time to do it right” before he brings it to the board for action. “But I wanted our community to hear that from me.”

At the Thursday evening school board meeting, Lassiter sophomore Hannah Levy said that as a Jew, she and some of her fellow Jewish students “do not feel safe at Lassiter.”

She said her parents were concerned about her speaking out, and that she’s afraid to wear her Star of David necklace to school.

“What is the school board going to do to fix this,” she said. “The longer you wait the more it’s going to fester.”

Levy said she and other Lassiter students want anti-hate and Holocaust education to be provided throughout the Cobb school district.

You can watch replays of both meetings by clicking here.

Related stories

• Jewish groups ask Cobb school board to condemn anti-Semitism
• Response to anti-Semitic school incidents: ‘A lesson in solidarity’
• Dickerson MS reports COVID-19 outbreak; cases falling in Cobb schools
• Cobb 2021 SAT scores: Big jump at Wheeler; Walton tops county
• Cobb school district responds to anti-Semitic incidents
• Anti-Semitic graffiti found in restrooms at Lassiter HS
• Cobb school board delays September meetings for Yom Kippur
• Pope HS bathrooms vandalized with anti-Semitic graffiti

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