Critic of Cobb schools on bullying issues running for school board

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An East Cobb attorney who has been critical of the Cobb County School District on bullying issues is running for Post 5 on the Cobb Board of Education in 2020. Robert Madayag, Cobb school board candidate

Robert Madayag is seeking the seat currently held by David Banks, whose third term ends next year. Post 5 includes most of the Pope and Lassiter high school attendance zones, as well as part of the Sprayberry cluster (see map at the bottom).

Madayag is the father of students at Sprayberry, Simpson Middle School and Kincaid Elementary School.

(For his campaign website, click here.)

Earlier this year, Madayag assisted parents, including some at Walton High School, who complained about how the district responded to their claims about their children being bullied. He thinks the district underreports data on the number of students who report bullying.

Madayag said in his announcement that “there is no doubt that the CCSD has done a great job of helping those students at the top,” but said he’s heard from “countless parents about how their kids were bullied, suffered racially charged language, and were forced to fight the school district to have their kids provided basic needs.”

His priorities include doing a countywide assessment about how bullying cases are handled, providing transparency to the public on how much the district spends on legal fees and creating the position of Chief Equity Officer.

Madayag also wants to address what he says are “stories upon stories of parents with special needs kids that have had to fight and fight with the CCSD, at their own great expense, just to get treatment that other school districts provide without fighting.”

East Cobb News has left a message with Madayag seeking more information about his candidacy.

Madayag, who is running as a Republican, is a former chairman of the Modern Whig Party of Georgia, which formed in 2009 with a centrist platform aimed at those disaffected with both Democrats and Republicans.

Currently the seven-member school board has four Republicans and three Democrats. Four seats are up next year, including Post 1 (North Cobb), Post 3 (South Cobb) and Post 7 (West Cobb).

Madayag is a U.S. Navy veteran who earned an engineering degree from Georgia Tech, then earned a law degree from Villanova University. He practices patent and corporate law in the Atlanta office of Lee & Hayes, a national firm.

He and his family have been involved in school and youth sports and music activities in their community. His wife Rebecca has been a member of the PTSA board at Simpson, and he has coached and served as an emcee for his sons’ football teams and at Sprayberry freshman and JV football games.

Banks, a Republican, has not indicated whether he’s running again. Matt Harper, an IT project manager, has announced his candidacy in the GOP primary (campaign website).

Harper taught science for three years at Murdock Elementary School and he and his wife Sharon have two daughters who attend Cobb schools. He also has served on the Murdock School Council.

Post 5 includes all or part of the following school zones:

  • High Schools: Pope, Lassiter, Sprayberry
  • Middle Schools: Hightower Trail, Mabry, Simpson
  • Elementary Schools: Davis, East Side, Eastvalley, Garrison Mill, Mountain View, Murdock, Powers Ferry, Sedalia Park, Shallowford Falls, Tritt
Cobb BOE Post 5
For larger map, click here.

 

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3 thoughts on “Critic of Cobb schools on bullying issues running for school board”

  1. There is NO reasonable way to control BULLIES. Most bullying is done un-noticed by the school officials, teachers and bus drivers. In the OLD days the student would be reported by name and a note mailed to the parents. I hope he is not using that excuse to get votes.

    • You’re absolutely right, James – there is no way that bullies can be controlled. They know where the cameras are, they know that teachers will demand names from the bullied child (who is usually afraid to give that out for fear of being bullied more, if they can get it at all), and, many times, the kid knows that their parent(s) will come in and defend them by intimidation, so they don’t care. Meanwhile, bullied kids live the rest of their lives with C-PTSD and a plethora of other problems.

      We need to get back to the days where parents and other authority figures weren’t so scared of what kids would do and where parents don’t think their kids are always cherubs who can do no wrong. This is another issue where “what works in East Cobb would not work in Powder Springs”; the principals and superintendents should be given parameters within which they can work and then apply them to their own schools. The CCSD making one policy to apply to the entire county isn’t going to work – and using this as a campaign issue is disingenuous at best. The problem starts where politicians have no purview: the home.

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