A capital outlay grant from the Georgia Public Library Service for nearly $2 million to help fund the reconstruction of the Gritters Library branch in Northeast Cobb will be considered Tuesday by the Cobb Board of Commissioners.
The agency is a part of the Georgia Board of Regents and provides state bond funding for the construction and renovation of public libraries. According to an agenda item, a state grant of $1.9 million has been awarded for the $6.8 million Gritters replacement project.
That’s a project included in the Cobb 2016 SPLOST (Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax). Initially, plans called for $2.9 million in renovations to upgrade technology and to enhance programs and serves and add community meeting rooms at Gritters, which opened at its current location in Shaw Park in 1973.
Tuesday’s agenda item notes that construction on the Gritters project “must begin within 180 days following the grant award, and at least 5 percent of the total cost of the grant must be spent within six months.”
There’s not a timetable for construction that’s indicated on the agenda item; more on the Gritters grant from GPLS can be found here.
Gritters is the last of the library projects remaining in the 2016 SPLOST. That collection period funded the Sewell Mill Library and Cultural Center that replaced the East Marietta Library, the consolidation of Acworth and Kennesaw branches to form the new North Cobb Regional Library and major renovations to the Switzer, South Cobb Regional and Sibley branches.
The meeting begins at 7 p.m. in the second floor board room of the Cobb government building, 100 Cherokee St., downtown Marietta, and will be live-streamed on the county’s website, cable TV channel (Channel 24 on Comcast) and Youtube page. Visit cobbcounty.org/CobbTV for other streaming options.
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You can follow real-time results compiled by the Georgia Secretary of State’s office by clicking here.
Original Post:
As approved last month by the Cobb Board of Education, there’s a referendum coming in November to extend the Cobb Education SPLOST (Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax), which pays for school construction, maintenance and technology costs.
If approved, the Cobb Ed-SPLOST VI would collect an estimated $894 million from 2024-29 for projects in the Cobb County School District and Marietta City Schools.
Among the major items on the Cobb project list is a rebuild of the main Sprayberry High School classroom building.
It’s the only countywide item on the 2021 Cobb ballot, with county, state and federal elections coming in 2022. Municipal elections will take place this year in Cobb’s six cities, including Marietta, where there’s a contest for mayor.
Incumbent Steve “Thunder” Tumlin is being challenged by council member Michelle Cooper Kelly, whose ward includes part of East Marietta.
Late last week Cobb Elections put out some information for voters on registration, absentee ballot procedures, advance voting and more for the November elections. Here are some of those details and deadlines:
Voters must register to vote or update their address by Oct. 4 at MVP.sos.ga.gov.
Absentee ballots will be mailed to voters beginning Oct. 11.
Voted absentee ballots must be received by Cobb Elections staff before 7pm on Nov. 2, 2021.
Ballots can be returned by postal mail, or
hand-delivered to the ballot box inside the Cobb Elections office, or
hand-delivered to any early voting location during voting hours.
In a pilot program, Cobb Elections staff will also accept voted ballots at certain libraries starting on Oct. 25. A schedule or dates, times and locations will be published soon.
Early voting will begin on Oct. 12. A schedule of dates, times and locations will be published no later than Sept. 27.
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Join the Cobb Chamber for its first Business After Hours since 2019 on Wednesday, August 25 at the W&A Engineering in Cumberland.
Business After Hours is a networking event that gives members and guests the opportunity to not just trade business cards, but to gather and connect with like-minded professionals and share ideas and solutions. The August Business After Hours event includes beverages, appetizers, tours, networking and the chance to welcome W&A Engineers to Cobb County.
The social is free and begins at 5:00 p.m. The August Business After Hours is sponsored by W&A Engineering. Registration is open until August 25 at www.cobbchamber.org/events.
For more information about Business After Hours contact Jani Dix at jdix@cobbchamber.org or 770-859-2335.
W & A Engineering is also having its ribbon-cutting event Wednesday that starts at 3 p.m. (The Wildwood Center, 2300 Windy Ridge Parkway, Suite 1105) with the following measures in place:
We would like to inform you all that out of an abundance of caution, the Wildwood Center facility is currently asking ALL GUESTS to wear face masks while traveling in the common spaces of the building.
Guests will be required to wear a mask to enter the Wildwood Center building, however, masks will not be required within the main event space. We kindly ask everyone to be respectful of this rule. We are working diligently to ensure everyone is able to come together for a fun and safe event.
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Town Center at Cobb is celebrating all of its junior shoppers with the ‘Under the Sea’ Kids Club Event in partnership with Marietta Cobb Museum of Art on Saturday, Aug. 28 from 1-3 p.m. in Center Court. Families can enjoy sea-themed crafts with the museum’s director of education, Allison Frink, alongside mermaid and pirate appearances; a selfie station; retailer and business stations; goody bags for the kids (while supplies last); take-home activities; door prizes; and more!
WHAT: Town Center at Cobb ‘Under the Sea’ Kids Club Event with Marietta Cobb Museum of Art
WHEN: Saturday, Aug. 28 1-3 p.m.
WHERE: Town Center at Cobb in Center Court 400 Ernest Barrett Pkwy NW Kennesaw, GA 30144
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Cobb County government produced a video this week featuring various elected and government officials and others urging the public to get vaccinated for COVID-19 and to wear masks in public.
The message—you can see the whole video below—features Cobb Sheriff Craig Owens, Cobb District Attorney Flynn Broady, Cobb and Douglas Public Health director Dr. Janet Memark and State Rep. Erick Allen, chairman of the Cobb legislative delegation.
Some of them issued personal messages, including Broady, who said he has lost three family members to COVID-19.
“I want to keep my family safe and everyone around me,” Broady said.
Said Owens: “Take it from someone who had the virus. You do not want the virus.”
More than 1,100 COVID-19 deaths have taken place in Cobb County since the pandemic was declared in March 2020.
The video comes days after Cobb Commission Chairwoman Lisa Cupid issued a 30-day emergency declaration and urged private businesses and other entities to require indoor mask use.
Cupid cannot issue a broader mandate than that because of an executive order by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp banning local mask mandates.
Cobb County Manager Jackie McMorris issued a mask mandate for county buildings that began on Friday.
The Cobb County School District is staying masks-optional despite protests from many parents who held a rally before school board meetings this week.
Cobb’s 14-day average of COVID-19 cases per county is reaching 700, far above the “high community spread” threshold of 100 cases.
Cobb also has a test positivity rate of more than 12 percent, also well above the 5-percent metric public health leaders say is ideal.
They also have been worried about the county’s low vaccination rate.
According to the Georgia Department of Public Health (vaccine dashboard here), only 49 percent of the eligible population is “fully vaccinated” and 56 percent have had at least one dose.
While Cobb’s figures are high for the state, Georgia and many other Southern states are lagging in vaccination rates.
The Georgia DPH also shows vaccination rates by Census tracts (map here). There are at least a dozen tracts in East Cobb with the highest numbers of vaccinated people—between 3,100 and 10,000 per tract.
Other pockets with high rates include Powder Springs, West Cobb, Acworth, Kennesaw and Marietta.
A number of the tracts with the lowest rates—between 2,000 and 3,100 people per tract—are in South Cobb and West Cobb. Some East Cobb tracts also have few vaccinations, including two tracts with fewer than 2,000.
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The annual Corky Kell Classic kicked off Thursday and high school football teams from near and far and battling it out on the gridiron. Kell High School faces McEachern at 9 a.m. Saturday.
Nick Kavadellas, president and CEO of Orasi, a software security innovator, has been involved in the Kell event and foundation and youth sports for many years and strongly believes that sports and business go together.
Not long after Kavadellas founded Orasi in May 2002 he received a call from an old football coach at Sprayberry High School, Johnny Callwell, who was just hired to coach at Kell, inviting Nick to get involved. Kavadellas not only set himself up as a Kell booster immediately, but coached alongside Callwell. He coached for 16 years and is still an active supporter of the school. In fact, believe it or not, Kell wasn’t in the Corky Kell event in the beginning, until Kavadellas pushed to get the school in about 10 years ago.
Along the way Kavadellas became involved in the Georgia Middle School Athletic organization. He was the treasurer and scheduler for 126 schools and is still an active board member. In 2009 Kavadellas focused on the fact that there were no football and cheer programs in the elementary grades. He lobbied and founded the Cobb Football League and remains President of that organization. Kavadellas was awarded 2011 Cobb Volunteer of the Year and estimates that over the last 10 years 10,000 football kids and 8,000 cheerleaders have come thru the Cobb program.
Kavadellas takes his love of the game and coaching to work as well. As founder of a successful tech company, he aligns themes of teamwork, community and sportsmanship with how he runs the company, believing sports mirrors life’s lessons and builds character, lessons and character traits that are applicable in business and life in general. Kavadellas also ensures that Orasi’s philanthropic efforts include the Kell Foundation.
All told, Nick gives more than 500 hours per year of his time to local Atlanta youth programs. “Leadership through stewardship enables good will and good business to work hand in hand, on and off the field. Community sports help everyone,” he says.
Some of his old Kell players end up working for Orasi, too. “We continue to invest in kids that have gone through the programs long after they leave high school. One kid I coached went to Kennesaw State and then we hired him. Now he’s married with a son and I coach his son.”
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East Side ES has reported 84 cases of COVID-19 since the school year began, the most in the Cobb County School District.
The day after the Cobb County School District announced quarantine policy changes and said it would maintain its masks-optional policy, nearly 1,000 new cases of COVID-19 were reported in the schools.
The district’s weekly Friday update showed 942 new cases, a big jump from 569 cases a week ago. There were 185 cases during the first week of school at the start of August, during which the district “strongly encouraged” mask use and changed some other prootocls.
Since July 1, there have been 1,764 cases among students and staff in the Cobb school district, which has 109,000 students and around 13,000 staff.
The numbers at East Side Elementary School continue to mount, with 35 new cases and 84 in the three weeks since the school year began.
That’s by far the highest total in the 112-school system. East Side fifth-graders have been learning remotely since the middle of last week and were to be allowed to return to campus on Monday.
Walton High School had 33 cases this week, and there were 32 at Sprayberry High School.
Also in East Cobb, there were 15 new cases at Sedalia Park ES, Garrison Mill ES reported 14 new cases, there were 11 at East Cobb MS and Dodgen MS and 10 at Daniell MS.
On Thursday Cobb school superintendent Chris Ragsdale announced new quarantine provisions for students who are identified as close contacts and whose exposure took place in school.
Those students will have to be quarantined for three days, following a new order from the Georgia Department of Public Health. They can return after those three days, as long as they are asymptomatic, and they must wear a mask on their campus for seven more days after exposure.
The policy also states the following:
“Students who are identified as a close contact where the point of exposure occurred in the school setting and are symptomatic must follow the isolation guidance contained in the close contact letter.”
More health protocols can be found here; Ragsdale also said Thursday that the district’s online learning options will be expanded for the second semester via lottery process.
He said the window for that process will open in October, and those students chosen through the lottery will be notified in November.
That doesn’t address the immediate concerns of parents who cannot switch their children from face-to-face to remote learning. That option was available last year but parents had to make their choice for the current school year in May, when COVID-19 spread was low.
Only 2,000 of the district’s students were enrolled in the Elementary Virtual Program and Cobb Online Academy for the fall semester.
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The old East Cobb Middle School campus will be giving way soon for a rebuild of Eastvalley Elementary School.
As noted earlier this week, the district is planning to demolish the Holt Road buildings, and on Thursday the Cobb Board of Education approved the project by a 7-0 vote.
Marc Smith, the district’s chief technology and operations officer, said the $348,000 project is expected to be finished by Dec. 20.
A bit tongue-in-cheek, board member David Chastain, who attended the school when it was known as East Cobb Junior High School, expressed an interest in getting bricks from the demolition.
“Yes sir, we can make that happen,” Smith told Chastain, who broke out into a grin.
Board member Tre’ Hutchins, who attended East Cobb Middle School in the late 1980s, made the same request.
East Cobb Middle School opened on Holt Road in 1963, and reopened in a new venue on Terrell Mill Road in 2018, next to the relocated campus of Brumby Elementary School.
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Superintendent Chris Ragsdale reading a written statement about COVID-19 changes; but he said he will not mandate masks.
Cobb school superintendent Chris Ragsdale said Thursday night that the Cobb County School District will not issue a mask mandate, although their use is “strongly encouraged.”
His remarks came after a public comment period in which he was emotionally urged by parents to impose a mask mandate, and on the same day that Marietta City Schools said it would begin requiring masks.
Before a Cobb Board of Education meeting there also was a rally organized by parents who want a mask mandate.
Ragsdale said that some areas with mandated masks in schools have no lower COVID-19 figures than those without mandates, and that he wanted to leave it to parents to decide what is best for their families.
Applause broke out in the meeting room when he said that.
There also is not a vaccine mandate in the Cobb school district, and Ragsdale said it’s “not appropriate” to mandate that as well.
Here are more of his remarks:
“Mandatory masking is not without a cost. We recognize that there are negative impacts to school-age children properly wearing a mask during the duration of the school day. The data analysis is obviously very complex during this pandemic.
“We have made a continuous effort to allow families to have a choice, both in the type of instruction, whether it be face to face or virtual, and in the decision about what is best for their families in regards to masks. We have also encouraged vaccinations but believe it’s also a personal choice for each employee, student, and family to make based on their individual situation. At this time, I do not believe it is appropriate to mandate either decision, which would remove the ability for each family to make the best decision for them as a family.
“Some parents who spoke in favor of the mandate also wanted to be able to switch to virtual learning, an option that had not been allowed for the new school year.”
Cobb’s decision runs counter to recent guidance from the Centers for Disease Control, which is urging indoor mask usage in schools, as well as Cobb and Douglas Public Health.
Among the parents pleading for a mask mandate was Tim Philbin, father of a fifth-grade student at Eastvalley Elementary School.
He said that “our students need in-person learning, and masks are one of the things that can keep them there.”
Ragsdale said that the district’s all-online learning environments will be expanding for a lottery for the second semester. Those are the Elementary Virtual Program (EVP) and Cobb Online Learning Academy (COLA) for middle school and high school students.
He didn’t indicate how many spaces will open, but anticipates the window for applying for the lottery to open in mid- to late October.
A Cobb school district spokeswoman told East Cobb News last week that only around 2,000 of the district’s 109,000 students are in all-online learning this year.
Unlike last year, students learning in a virtual setting are not being taught by in-person classroom teachers.
Ragsdale also said the district would be modifying its quarantine policy regarding close contacts. Students who are quarantining at home for three days can return after that, as long as they are asymptomatic.
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Cobb Commission Chairwoman Lisa Cupid has signed a 30-day emergency declaration in the county due to a sharp surge in COVID-19 cases, citing a “critically low” shortage of hospital beds.
In a release issued by Cobb spokesman Ross Cavitt, Cupid also cited high test positivity rates and low vaccination rates.
She urged those who have not been vaccinated to do so, and encouraged businesses and other non-government entities in Cobb to mandate indoor mask use “for the protection of employees and customers.”
As of Thursday, Cobb has a 14-day average of 670 cases per 100,000 people. The “high community spread” threshold is 100 cases, and that figure has risen sharply in the last month.
That’s because Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp earlier Thursday issued an order preventing local governments from imposing mask mandates and other restrictions on private businesses.
Kemp said on social media that his order “will make sure businesses across our state can’t be punished by local governments for trying to make a living, pay their employees, and save their livelihoods. Georgia is open for business!”
Cobb did not have a mask mandate beyond county buildings last year under former chairman Mike Boyce. Some cities in Georgia, including Atlanta and Savannah, have imposed mandates on non-government entities.
“Public health officials are urging us to do whatever we can to encourage people to get the COVID vaccine and wear masks while near other people,” Cupid said in Cavitt’s release.
“This declaration will open the doors to provide assistance to others in the county who need it and highlight the critical stress this surge has put on our local healthcare facilities.”
Her declaration also activates the county’s Emergency Operations Plan for resources to be funneled to hospitals, state agencies or others with a critical need for equipment and supplies.
You can read the full Cobb emergency declaration by clicking here.
On Thursday, executives from hospitals in Georgia, including Wellstar, discussed how the COVID-19 surge is affecting their operations. You can watch it below.
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Near the end of a Thursday work session, members of the Cobb Board of Education tore into one another when one of them tried to add a discussion about COVID-19 protocols to the Thursday night business meeting.
COVID-19 issues were not included on the agenda for either meeting, although most of the citizens who signed up to speak at the work session’s public comment session were there to talk about those topics.
There also was a protest planned for 6:30 p.m., a half-hour before the evening session, on the mask issue.
The arguments blew up when board chairman Randy Scamihorn asked his colleagues to approve the night meeting agenda as amended. At that point, board member Tre’ Hutchins made a motion to add a discussion item about COVID-19 protocols.
Some parents have demanded a mask mandate, and the district recently revised its quarantine protocols with the start of the school year.
Nina Gupta, the Cobb school board attorney and the meeting parliamentarian, said the board could add an agenda item if it’s considered an emergency that’s arisen since the last meeting.
Hutchins, who was attending the meeting via Zoom, said he thought the COVID-19 measures and the district’s rising case totals constituted an emergency.
Cobb school board chairman Randy Scamihorn
“That’s why I’m asking,” said Hutchins, one of three Democrats on the seven-member board.
But Scamihorn immediately said there’s not an emergency, and the district’s protocols have “never been presented as such.”
He denied Hutchins’ request, and board member Jaha Howard, another Democrat, asked: “Are we not in an emergency?”
Scamihorn ruled that he was out of order, then called the question and over objections announced that the vote to deny adding the COVID-19 discussion was 4-3, with the board’s four Republicans in the majority.
Hutchins objected from his remote location that “I made a motion but did not vote.”
Howard, a pediatric dentist who has clashed openly with Scamihorn several times this year, interrupted the chairman, who growled at him: “Dr. Howard, do you have no manners!”
The board then adjourned to an executive session.
Scamihorn also attempted to get his colleagues to approve the hiring of Taylor English, a Cobb law firm, to draw a map of Cobb school board posts to present for reapportionment.
The three Democrats objected, especially when Scamihorn hadn’t provided a cost estimate. So did Republican vice chairman David Banks of East Cobb, who said he didn’t think hiring a third party was appropriate and that the maps would be “whatever the legislature decides it looks like.”
Scamihorn, who said hiring the firm was only to get the process started, decided to table the measure until the evening meeting.
Cobb is one of the few school districts in metro Atlanta without a mask mandate. Earlier Thursday, Marietta City Schools announced a mask mandate starting on Monday.
East Cobb resident Stacy Efrat
But COVID-19 topic came up at the Cobb work session only from members of the public.
East Cobb resident Caryn Sonderman thanked the district for keeping masks optional, saying “you are following the science and the facts.”
Stacy Efrat of East Cobb, whose family has tested positive for COVID-19 and whose children are home in quarantine, bemoaned the lack of academic support for students who cannot be in school.
Unlike last school year, Cobb is not offering simultaneous instruction in classes and for remote students.
“You are encouraging parents to send their kids to school sick,” she said.
Connie Jackson of the Cobb County Association of Educators may have prefigured the melee at the end of the meeting when she said that in her 20 years associated with the Cobb school district, “I have never seen a debacle like [what] our current school board is.”
She was referring to a lack of respect she said some have shown to others, although she didn’t name names.
Over the last three years, Jackson said, “we have lost so many of the things that have made us great.”
She complained that “nearly half the school board”—a reference to the three Democrats in the minority—has been silenced.
In order for agenda items to be discussed at meetings, members must get a majority of their colleagues to agree.
But the Democrats could not get one of the Republicans to put COVID-19 topics on the agenda.
Instead, the board heard presentations about student outcomes, a tax abatement involving the South Cobb Redevelopment Authority and the demolition of the former East Cobb Middle School campus.
Superintendent Chris Ragsdale also has the ability to bring agenda items unilaterally, but he did not mention COVID-19 protocols at the work session.
Board governance issues are among the topics that prompted a special review by Cognia, the board’s accrediting agency, earlier this week. Those results are expected to be released this fall.
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A deer wanders around a former homesite on Providence Road where new Walton High School tennis courts will be located.
After several months of trying to get information from the Cobb County School District about the proposed Walton High School sports complex, residents in neighboring subdivisions are airing their concerns publicly.
A construction contract to build tennis courts and a baseball field on nearly 20 acres of land on Providence Road and Pine Road is slated to go before the Cobb Board of Education in September.
Over the summer, the district has been developing a site plan and completing work on relocating the Walton softball team back to an on-campus location.
But residents living near the new baseball field—which is moving from its “Raider Mountain” site at the back of the Walton campus to the new venue—are worried that it’s too close to their homes.
They’ve asked the district to reconfigure the bleachers and concession stands, which they say will be built 50-70 feet from their homes. Resident Jennifer Sunderland, whose home at the end of a cul-de-sac on Mulberry Lane is among them, told East Cobb News earlier this week that she’s been told “flipping” the field is not possible.
But she said she heard Tuesday from James Wilson, a school district consultant who’s been asked to work with neighbors from Independence Square and other subdivisions, that he would try “to make this happen.”
Sunderland is scheduled to address the topic at a public comment session Thursday night before the Cobb school board.
The mother of a Dodgen Middle School student, she said she’s not against the Walton sports complex and is not used to speaking in public.
“But we fear that the current plan will greatly diminish the enjoyment of our properties and negatively affect our property values,” Sunderland said, speaking on behalf of other neighbors whom she said didn’t want to be identified.
“Receipt of our concerns have been acknowledged and neighbors including myself are awaiting detailed answers.”
A site plan for the new Walton baseball field includes bleacher seating close to the Independence Square subdivision.
Access to the baseball field would be on Pine Road, near a former homesite that has been demolished. So have two homesites near the intersection of Providence Road and Pine Road, where the tennis courts would be located.
Those demolitions, as well as the site plan work and the softball relocation project, are all part of an estimated $3 million Walton sports complex project.
But those tasks apparently were undertaken without formal funding approval by the Cobb school board. Initially, the new complex was to have housed tennis and softball facilities. Walton’s teams in those sports have played at Terrell Mill Park since 2014 to make way for a new Walton classroom building.
The district has not explained the decision to switch out the baseball and softball venues, or to proceed with some of the construction project before formal approval.
The Walton softball team is beginning its current season on the road and according to the team’s schedule, will be playing at its new venue at Raider Mountain, where the baseball field once stood, starting Sept. 7.
When East Cobb News asked the district to explain those actions, as well as the concerns of Independence Square residents, a spokeswoman said that “all available details will be provided [Thursday] during the Board meeting.”
She didn’t elaborate; the board has afternoon and evening meetings Thursday, and there is nothing on the agenda for either meeting about the Walton sports complex.
New Walton High School tennis courts would be located at Providence and Pine roads.
The Cobb school board approved $5.65 million in land purchases for the new Walton sports complex. Site plan renderings show that the part of the land along Bill Murdock Road, across from the main campus, won’t be developed at all.
That was part of a 20-acre tract formerly owned by Thelma McClure, who sold in November 2019 for $3 million after the Cobb school district threatened eminent domain.
In August 2020, the school board approved the purchases of 3.5 acres on Pine Road for $2 million, and 1.2 acres on Providence Road for $650,000 for the sports complex.
Shortly after that, Sunderland said the district notified nearby residents that Wilson, a former Cobb superintendent who runs Education Planners, a Marietta-based school demographics and planning firm, that he would be their contact point.
She said there have been some Zoom calls and some e-mail exchanges since then, but she said until now there’s been no response to their concerns about the baseball field.
Among the requests she said she will be asking Thursday is for the district to delay approving funding for construction “until you have written confirmation from myself that reasonable modifications and accommodations have occurred.”
Homes on Mulberry Lane in Independence Square would be as close as 50 feet from the new Walton baseball field.
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
The following Cobb food scores for the week of Aug. 16 have been compiled by the Cobb & Douglas Department of Public Health. Click the link under each listing for inspection details:
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
Vehicles line up along Roswell Road Wednesday for COVID-19 testing at East Cobb United Methodist Church.
The highly transmissable Delta variant of COVID-19 has been spreading especially fast in Cobb County, which is among the nearly three-quarters of Georgia counties classified as being in the “red zone” for test positivity rate.
That’s the percentage of people tested for COVID-19 who get a positive result. Georgia Department of Public Health figures show that 12.6 percent of Cobb PCR tests for the virus have been positive.
That’s from July 29-Aug. 11, during which 27,338 PCR tests were administered in Cobb County.The red category is designated by Georgia DPH for counties with a positivity rating of 10 percent or more, and as of Aug. 11 that’s 73 percent, or 115, of Georgia’s 159 counties.
Some counties had test positivity rates of 30 percent or more, mainly in rural areas of the state.
Only 42 counties were in the yellow zone (positivity rates of between 5-10 percent, and two counties (Fayette and Jefferson) were in the green zone (5 percent or under).
Public health officials have said during the COVID-19 pandemic that anything above a 5 percent test positivity rate is cause for concern.
Cobb’s 14-day average of cases per 100,000 has climbed above 600 (PCR and Antigen tests), a figure as high as late January, when transmission of the virus was dropping.
(You can read the latest statewide test positivity report by clicking here.)
At one point, Cobb’s 14-day average was under 100 cases per 100,000 people, the threshold for high community spread. At the same time, the test positivity rating fell to around 2-3 percent.
But that has shot up as the Delta variant became the predominant strain of the virus in Cobb, Georgia and most of the nation.
The transmission of the COVID-19 prompted Cobb County Manager Jackie McMorris to impose a mask mandate for county buildings starting Friday.
The Cobb County School District is also coming under pressure from some parents to impose a mask mandate. The school year started Aug. 1 with a masks-optional policy, and before Thursday’s Cobb Board of Education evening meeting a rally is planned to demand a mandate.
There was a rally last week that was met by counter-protestors, the day after the entire 5th grade at East Side Elementary School was sent home due to a COVID-19 outbreak.
There’s nothing on the school board agenda related to the district’s COVID-19 protocols.
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Cobb Schools bus drivers and monitors will soon have an extra reason to love their jobs. Superintendent Chris Ragsdale announced today that the District is offering a $1,200 retention bonus to all bus drivers and monitors payable in their December payroll. To be eligible for the retention bonus, each driver and monitor must be employed by September 24th.
“Superintendent Ragsdale talks a lot about our Team. Our bus drivers and monitors are the first Team member many of our students and parents see every day. We want to do everything we can to hire the best and keep the best,” said Chief Operations Officer Marc Smith.
Safety-minded professionals interested in joining the Cobb Schools team as a bus driver or monitor should apply here. Specific questions about the bonus should be directed to the Payroll Department.
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When Sara Cavorley registered five of her children for in-person learning at public schools in East Cobb last spring, she wasn’t aware at the time she couldn’t change that decision.
As it turns out, she wasn’t alone in expressing frustration about not having an option to go virtual, especially as transmission of COVID-19 has rapidly increased in Cobb County in recent weeks.
When she showed up for meet-and-greet events at Kincaid Elementary School and Sprayberry High School last month, Cavorley also was upset that masks would not be required for students and staff, as they were on campuses last year.
“Nobody was wearing masks,” she said about the orientation events.
Cavorley is among those parents who want the district to reimpose a mandate just three weeks into the school year. The Cobb school district has reported 822 staff and student COVID-19 cases since July 1, and nearly 600 last week alone.
The entire fifth-grade class at East Side Elementary School is learning remotely through the end of this week due to an outbreak at that East Cobb campus.
In speaking to East Cobb News last weekend, a few days after a pro-mandate rally at Cobb County School District headquarters, Cavorley said she was thinking of taking her children out of the schools.
Her oldest son, Leland, 13, is enrolled at Simpson Middle School but continues to learn from home. He’s been getting infusions since the age of two due to a rare form of cancer called AML, and as a result lacks a strong immune system.
“If Leland gets it, we are in trouble,” she said of the virus.
Her oldest son, who attends Sprayberry and is autistic, panicked at the sight of students and staff not wearing masks, she said.
On Monday, Cavorley said she had withdrawn her children to protect Leland from getting COVID-19.
Leland Cavorley in a virtual learning environment at his home last school year.
She said she’s undecided about her next move, including the option of home-schooling, since virtual is not an option.
“Children are literally dropping like flies out of school as the numbers soar,” she said. “What is a parent to do, choose between life, or school. It’s a no-brainer, we choose life!”
For the time being, Cavorley said she will be among those attending a rally before a Cobb Board of Education meeting Thursday in favor of a mask mandate.
“If everyone wears them, they will make a difference,” Cavorley said.
The rally is scheduled for 6:30 p.m.,. before a 7 p.m. board voting meeting, at which parents are expected to speak about the mask issue.
Last week, around 100 mask mandate advocates were met by counter-protesters at CCSD headquarters in what occasionally became a contentious event.
The school board also meets at 2:30 p.m. for a work session, although there’s nothing on the agenda mentioning the district’s COVID-19 response.
But Cavorley said this isn’t just about masks.
“We want all the protocols from last year,” said, including social-distancing, classroom lunches and plexiglass barriers, and she provided a photo of what took place at Kincaid, where she has two children enrolled.
After struggling to oversee the virtual learning of her six children last year—her oldest, a daughter, is now attending Kennesaw State University—Cavorley was initially glad for them to go back to their schools.
A Zoom screenshot from Kincaid ES in the 2020-21 school year showing social-distancing protocols in place.
She and her family bunkered down at home for months, including her husband Sean, a technology executive. While they settled in, she went out do to the shopping, wearing extra protective gear.
“I had to be the one to do it,” said Cavorley, who got some help from her mother, who’s retired from the state public health department.
Her husband boosted the household WiFi capacity to cover seven computers. Two of her children, Makana and Saoirse, were set up the kitchen, her son Seamus was in a home office and two other children, Eliana and Jayden, learned in a basement.
Leland was upstairs in his room, and her husband worked in the master bedroom.
“Everyone stayed put but me,” Cavorley said. “And no one got sick. None of us even had a cold.”
Her four oldest children have been vaccinated (children 12 and under are not eligible for the vaccines).
Cavorley said she can’t understand why the Cobb school district isn’t following recent guidance from the Centers for Disease Control recommending universal mask-wearing in schools.
The district has upgraded its protocols to “strongly encourage” masks, but remains one of the few in metro Atlanta not to require them.
“We’re in a mass pandemic,” she said. “We’re trying to protect people as a whole.”
While she “feels for parents who feel their rights are being taken away” with a mask mandate, Cavorley wondered “if they could just see it from a different point of view.”
She said she’s hoping at the very least that parents like her who’ve chosen in-person learning could switch to virtual.
But the district has set up two different learning environments, unlike last year, and hired limited teachers and staff dedicated for the virtual option.
A Cobb school district spokeswoman told East Cobb News last week that around 2,000 of the district’s estimated 109,000 enrolled students were in the full-time virtual options, the elementary virtual program (EVP) and the Cobb Online Learning Academy (COLA).
“We have to get rid of this nasty thing [COVID-19],” Cavorley said. “This saddens me, that parents aren’t being given any good options.”
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Cobb County Manager Jackie McMorris said that beginning Friday, a mask mandate will be in effect in all government buildings, due to rising COVID-19 case figures.
They include libraries, but outdoor facilities—including county parks and the Mable House Amphitheater—will be exempt from the order.
McMorris said the decision also stems from an increase in COVID-19 cases within the county workforce, but she didn’t specify how many people are affected.
“As the result of what is going on across the nation, the region, and of course here in Cobb, we’ve had to make some tough decisions on what we are going to do here in Cobb County Government,” Dr. McMorris said Tuesday in a statement issued by the county.
The mandate covers county employees, visitors, contractors and vendors, and public meetings also will be socially-distanced, as they were previously. Cobb courthouses have maintained a mask mandate since the pandemic began in March 2020.
There’s not a timetable for ending the mandate, and McMorris said masks will be available for people coming to county facilities who don’t have them.
Cobb had a similar mask mandate for several months last year and early this year, but dropped it when cases began falling during the spring.
However, the rapidly spreading Delta variant of COVID-19 has resulted in the highest transmission rates in Cobb since then.
As of Tuesday, the 14-day average of cases per 100,000 people had soared to more than 600, well above the “high community spread” threshold of 100 cases per 100,000.
“We’re in the second month of this and it just does not seem to be going away,” said Dr. Janet Memark, Director of Cobb and Douglas Public Health in the Cobb statement. “Right now we’re seeing younger people being hospitalized, and we continue to see hospitals that are dangerously low on critical care beds and medical-surgical beds.”
She didn’t offer any figures or further elaborate.
Some cities in Georgia, among them Atlanta, have imposed mask mandates beyond government facilities, including private businesses and other entities that are open to the public.
Cobb has not done that. Former Cobb commission chairman Mike Boyce said last year that while he strongly urged citizens to wear masks in public, he didn’t want to stretch law enforcement to that purpose, and also indicated he wasn’t likely to get his colleagues to agree.
Current chairwoman Lisa Cupid has been wearing masks at public meetings, and indicated in a county-produced video last week that she was considering taking some action.
She didn’t specify what that might be.
More from McMorris and Memark about the mask mandate can be seen in the video below.
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With a split vote looming, the Cobb Board of Commissioners voted Tuesday to delay the East Cobb Church rezoning request yet again, until September.
District 2 commissioner Jerica Richardson made motion to hold the application of North Point Ministries after her earlier motion to approve the mixed-use plan for Johnson Ferry and Shallowford roads failed to gain enough support from her colleagues.
The five-member commission was down to four due to the absence of chairwoman Lisa Cupid, whose grandmother passed away earlier Tuesday.
Commissioners JoAnn Birrell of Northeast Cobb and Keli Gambrill of West Cobb said they couldn’t vote to approve the rezoning because of the RA-6 residential category that’s part of the rezoning request.
North Point Ministries wants to build a 130,000-square foot East Cobb Church on part of the 33-acre assemblage and sell 22 acres to Ashwood Atlanta, a residential developer, for 71 townhomes and 59 single-family detached homes.
That portion of the development has generated substantial community opposition from residents who are still supportive of a church. They’re concerned about density, traffic and stormwater issues, and dozens of variances.
The Cobb Planning Commission recommended approval of the North Point Ministries request earlier this month on its fourth hearing, but the first time the case went before county commissioners drew just as many issues in a 90-minute discussion.
“This application has gone on for the length of a pregnancy,” mused commission vice chairwoman Monique Sheffield to some chuckling, noting it’s been eight months since first being filed.
Richardson’s motion was contingent on North Point Ministries submitted a new residential category and site plan.
Kevin Moore, the North Point Ministries attorney, said “we’d be happy to take a look . . . This applicant has done that the entire time.”
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Another major step toward the rebuilding of Eastvalley Elementary School will go before the Cobb Board of Education on Thursday.
The board will be asked to spend $348,000 to demolish the former campus of East Cobb Middle School on Holt Road.
That’s across the street from Wheeler High School, and where the new Eastvalley campus will be relocated.
That item will be presented to the board at a 2:30 p.m. work session, with action scheduled for a 7 p.m. voting meeting Thursday.
Both meetings will take place at the Cobb County School District central office (514 Glover St., Marietta), and you can read through the agendas by clicking here.
An executive session will take place between the two public meetings.
The board is being asked to award the East Cobb MS demolition contract to Chaplin and Sons Clearing and Demolition, Inc. of Augusta.
The funding for the demolition and reconstruction of Eastvalley on the Holt Road site comes from Cobb Ed-SPLOST V.
According to the agenda item, the estimated time for completion of the demolition project is December. There isn’t a timeline that’s been announced for Eastvalley, which has been located on Lower Roswell Road since the early 1960s.
East Cobb Middle School opened on Holt Road in 1963, and opened in a new venue on Terrell Mill Road in 2018, next to the relocated campus of Brumby Elementary School.
Eastvalley parents have been complaining to the board about the conditions of trailers that are being used to accommodate the over-capacity enrollment of around 700, more than double what the main school building holds.
An architect for the Eastvalley rebuild project was approved by the Cobb Board of Education in February 2020, right before the COVID-19 pandemic, at a cost of $1.6 million. The project is expected to cost $31.6 million.
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The entire community is invited to participate in the 20th Anniversary of 9.11. Field of Flags Memorial Events sponsored by the Kiwanis Club of Marietta will be held from September 4th through September 18th (flag removal occurs on the 18th). The Field of Flags at Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park will honor and memorialize the 2,977 innocent and unsuspecting individuals who lost their lives on September 11, 2001, each flag representing one life lost on that tragic and horrific day in our nation’s history.
Procession of flags led by the Atlanta Pipe Band will occur on September 4th 10:00 am from Grace Community Church to Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park. Parking and shuttle bus service to the church will be available from lots on Old 41 beginning at 9:00 am. Return shuttle service will be provided.
Memorial Ceremony will be held on September 11th 7:55 am to 11:00 am in front of the Visitors Center Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park.
Ceremony will include: Bagpiper Tommy Burns, Speaker Retired NYFD Capt. James D’Avolio, Soloist Heather Tamburella, Marietta Fire Department Color Guard, 21 Gun Salute by Cobb County and Riderless Horseman presentation by the Cobb County Sheriff’s Department; CCSD Major Mark Rubio, bugler, will play taps after the reading of the names of the 2,977 innocent victims at the end of the Ceremony.
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