Near the end of his third term on the Cobb school board, David Banks said he’s seeking another four years because “I just feel like there’s more to be done.”
A retired computer and technology consultant and business owner, Banks has lived in East Cobb for 50 years and has represented Post 5, which represents the Pope and Lassiter clusters, since 2009.
He said that kind of experience is vital during a time in which the Cobb County School District, the second-largest in Georgia with 112,000 students, is undergoing rapid change.
“It takes a few years to get acclimated to how the system works,” said Banks, who’s serving as the school board’s vice chairman this year.
(Banks does not have a campaign website; here’s his school board biography page.)
He ran unopposed four years ago, but Banks has drawn a crowd of opposition in both parties, including Matt Harper and Shelley O’Malley, whom he’ll be facing in next Tuesday’s Republican primary.
O’Malley has been openly critical of Banks (as have Democrats Tammy Andress and Julia Hurtado), saying that “I hope voters recognize that when an incumbent is being challenged by other people there ought to be a reason for that.”
Other Post 5 candidate profiles
To which Banks asks of the others on the ballot: “Why are you running?” He said from what he’s read and learned about his opponents, “it tells me nothing about what they want to do.”
In addition to some of his most impassioned topics—advancing STEM and virtual reality instruction in schools—Banks said he hasn’t heard those trying to unseat him discuss such items as the education SPLOST, which funds construction and maintenance projects.
Nor does he think they’ve said much about how they would address what could be an $80 million Cobb schools budget shortfall due to heavily reduced state funding from COVID-19.
(The board hasn’t yet adopted a fiscal year 2021 budget because the legislative session was disrupted before it finalized education funding.)
“Where’s the meat?” Banks asked about his opponents’ campaign platforms. “What have they proposed that I’m not already doing?”
As for what he would do with a fourth term, Banks said more of the same: Advance more technological learning opportunities for students at every possible level, and broaden Capstone and AP curriculum.
He said he’s proud that more Cobb elementary schools are becoming STEM-certified. He wants to see more virtual reality and robotics options for students at the younger grade levels as well.
Emerging virtual reality fields “can open up a lot of doors for young people,” Banks said. “We’re just getting started with this.”
Among his initiatives would be to set up a test and demonstrate a proof of concept that could be expanded across the district.
Andress and Hurtado have advocated that the Cobb school district hire a chief equity officer to address inequities including race and ethnicity and special needs, but Banks said he is opposed to that (as are Harper and O’Malley).
“We have one of the best special ed programs in the state,” said Banks, who thinks the notion of an equity officer is “a buzzword, something the Democrat party uses a lot. But it doesn’t work.
“What’s it going to accomplish that we’re not doing already?”
He’s also against changing or even revisiting the Cobb schools senior property tax exemption (which he takes), an issue that also has come down along partisan lines.
Democrats, he said, “actually want to get rid of it,” which would require a change in state legislation. “Which representative or senator [in the Cobb delegation] is going to commit political suicide?”
A legislative idea he’s pushed before, and is advocating again in times of economic distress, is a 10-year local education sales tax (LEST), which would be one penny on the dollar to help fund Cobb schools operations.
Banks floated a measure during the recession, and it went nowhere. He says now, as he did several years ago, it would raise more than enough money ($150 million by his count) to overcome budget deficits, and return 30 percent of that funding to taxpayers in the form of a millage rate reduction.
“We need another source of income,” Banks said, admitting “it’s not easy to change a constitutional amendment. But if you can it frame right, and it shows the public benefit of having it, it’s a win-win.”
Should Cobb schools have to make dramatic cuts in teaching positions due to a reduced budget, Banks advocates laying off high school and middle school teachers in elective subjects, then rehiring them as paraprofessionals and have them teach students at multiple schools via teleconferencing.
“I might be an older person,” Banks said, referring to an opponent’s mention of his age, “but I try to find what’s coming and visualize what’s not even there now.”
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The Cobb Board of Commissioners, with a 5-0 vote, approved funding for a $50 million Small Business Grant Program designed to help struggling businesses recover from the economic damage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Funding will come out of the $132 million allocated to Cobb in the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act.
