Eastvalley ES in East Cobb is one of 17 schools in the Cobb school district still being used as a voting precinct.
The Cobb County School District announced Friday there will be what it’s calling “a virtual learning day” on Tuesday, Dec. 6, the date of the Georgia U.S. Senate runoff.
A release by the district said that because some school facilities will be in use for the election, that day will be an “asynchronous virtual learning day for all students. Students will work independently, at home, and teachers will have reviewed expectations with students the previous school day. There will not be required, live, virtual sessions.”
The runoff was declared after neither Democratic U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock nor his Republican opponent, former UGA football star Herschel Walker, failed to get a majority of the vote in Tuesday’s general election (results here).
Schools are traditionally closed for the primary and general elections. Warnock and fellow Democrat Jon Ossoff won U.S. Senate runoffs on Jan. 5, 2021, but that was during a school holiday break.
The Cobb school district has 112 school campuses, and 17 of them are voting precincts. They include Kell High School, Shallowford Falls Elementary School, Sope Creek Elementary School and Eastvalley Elementary School in East Cobb.
“As was the case on Election Day, this run-off election also impacts the entire county, not just a few schools,” a district spokeswoman said. “We are confident this is the safest decision for all students who have access to standards aligned content and a high quality platform, CTLS.”
In recent election cycles Cobb Elections has moved voting precincts away from schools at the request of the Cobb and Marietta districts for access, security and scheduling issues.
In 2020, 15 precincts in East Cobb that had been at schools were relocated to community and senior centers, houses of worship and other facilities.
Those schools were Lassiter and Pope high schools; Daniell, Dickerson, Dodgen, Hightower Trail, McCleskey and Simpson middle schools; and Addison, Blackwell, Davis, Kincaid, Garrison Mill and Nicholson elementary schools.
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The concert begins at 7 p.m. in the Lassiter Concert Hall (2601 Shallowford Road) and features the 116th Army band, the Lassiter NJROTC and choruses from Mabry and Simpson middle schools and Davis, Garrison Mill and Rocky Mount elementary schools.
All veterans and active duty military members and their families will be welcomed into the concert hall for early seating beginning at 6:30 p.m.
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The Cobb County School District will be conducting interviews for a number of staff support positions at a job fair in early December.
The fair takes place on Tuesday, Dec. 6, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Cobb Energy Centre (2800 Galleria Parkway).
Open positions include bus drivers, food nutrition workers, school nurses, substitute teachers, custodians, and campus police. The job fair will also include positions with the maintenance, fleet maintenance, and special education departments.
Ahead of the job fair, candidates can preview current vacancies by clicking here.
Online registration is available by clicking here; and a district job application can be completed in advance by clicking here.
Cobb school district staffers will be at the fair to assist those who are unable to submit an advance application.
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Walton, Wheeler, Pope and Lassiter students in the Class of 2022 posted average scores on American College Testing (ACT) exams that are among the best in Georgia.
According to a Cobb County School District release, they were among the five Cobb high schools with average scores of 25 or higher.
Walton High School led the district with an overall score of 26.0, followed by Wheeler (25.2), Pope (25.0) and Lassiter (24.7).
The district said those four schools, along with Kennesaw Mountain (24.0) were among the top 30 in the state.
The composite score at Sprayberry was 21.4 and Kell’s was 21.2 (see table at bottom).
The Cobb district’s average score was 23, down from 24.3 in 2021, as were most individual school composites, including those in East Cobb.
Cobb students averaged scores of 22.7 in English, 22.0 in math, 23.9 in reading, and 22.7 in science.
The district’s composite score is tied for the top in metro Atlanta along with Fulton County Schools, according to the release, and 1.4 points higher than the statewide average of 21.6.
Marietta City Schools had a composite score of 22.9, comprising students at Marietta High School.
The ACT is a standardized test similar to the SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) that is taken by college-bound high school students.
The ACT tests students in English, mathematics, reading and scientific reasoning on an overall score range of 1-36.
The Georgia Department of Education released district- and school-level numbers on Wednesday, with more detailed numbers from ACT testing in the six high schools in East Cobb.
The 21.6 statewide average is a point below 2021 scores. More than 35,000 Georgia students took the ACT in 2022, compared to more than 29,000 last year.
Walton (294), Lassiter (231) and Pope (214) were among the small number of schools that had 200 or more students taking the ACT in 2022, according to the Cobb release.
Four Cobb students had perfect scores of 36, the district said, including one at Walton and another at Wheeler.
The Top 15 ACT scores by school in Georgia is as follows:
Gwinnett School of Science, Mathematics and Technology—30.2
Northview (Fulton)—26.5
Alliance Academy for Innovation (Forsyth)—26.4
Lambert (Forsyth)—26.3
Walton (Cobb)—26.0
South Forsyth—25.5
Decatur—25.4
Johns Creek (Fulton)—25.3
Columbus, Wheeler, McIntosh (Fayette), North Forsyth, North Gwinnett, Savannah Arts Academy—25.2
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Venya Gunjal, a junior at Wheeler High School, was recently elected State President of Georgia 4-H at the State 4-H Council in Eatonton.
She will lead more than 200,000 students in Georgia 4-H, which is a youth development program that conducts projects in health, agriculture, science, civic engagement and public speaking with the aim of helping students acquire life skills.
As a representative of Georgia 4-H, Gunjal will be speaking at State 4-H Congress, State 4-H Council, 4-H Day at the Capitol, and Fall Forum. She has attended the State Officer Training to prepare for this role, where she met the Dean and President of the University of Georgia.
“Serving as a State 4-H Officer will help me touch the lives of so many more of my peers in a positive way. I’ve seen the work that past State Boards have done, and they’ve all left feeling completely inspired,” she said in a release issued by the Cobb County School District.
“It’s been a dream of mine to serve on the State Board for years. A position on the State Board of Directors will help increase my impact in communities all over the state of Georgia.”
Gunjal, who is enrolled in Wheeler’s magnet program, The Center for Advanced Studies in Science, Math and Technology, has been involved in 4-H since the 5th grade. She is a three-time master 4-Her, Dean’s award in STEM winner, and first place winner at the State Congress level for her presentation in the Environmental Sciences category.
She was honored in 202 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as the “Taking the Pulse of the Planet” award recipient and won first place in the public speaking competition at the State 4-H Congress;
Gunjal also was awarded the highest honor given by Georgia 4-H Master 4-Her, and earned the Water Wise Scholarship for water conservation and education within the community.
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After easily winning election to the Cobb Board of Education in 2014 and 2018, incumbent Post 4 member David Chastain is facing opposition that has prompted a different campaign approach than in the past.
Typically circumspect and mild-mannered in public, the Republican chairman of the seven-member board has issued newsletters, press releases and other statements that are anything but reserved.
The intensity of his campaign against political newcomer Catherine Pozniak (our profile of her is here), a Democrat, has ramped up as the Nov. 8 general election date approaches.
Pozniak denied the charge, saying Chastain “has stooped to mining my father’s obituary and weaponizing the details of his death and his estate to launch personal attacks.”
She previously accused him of campaign finance violations he has rebuked, although he has hired a former Congressional candidate and state ethics chairman to defend him in Pozniak’s complaint that will be decided after the election.
In a Post 4 area (Kell, Sprayberry, Lassiter clusters) that was redrawn by the GOP-dominated Georgia legislature to preserve a Republican seat, Chastain acknowledges there’s a different dynamic this year.
Since his last election, Democrats have become the majority party on the Cobb Board of Commissioners and the Cobb legislative delegation.
Until recently, she held a sizable campaign finance advantage over Chastain, who recently held a fundraiser at Atlanta Country Club. As of the end of September, both campaigns reported raising around $45,000 each, which is much higher than other recent school board elections in Cobb.
“Voters here have to show up and participate,” Chastain said in a recent interview with East Cobb News, referring to his conservative base. “I’m being attacked for things that have nothing to do with policy. You’re seeing this at the federal and state levels too.
“It’s not like me,” he said when asked about the charged rhetoric from his campaign, including his taking a shot at Harvard, where Pozniak earned a doctorate degree.
A proposal analyst at Lockheed Martin, Chastain is campaigning on the Cobb school district’s test scores and defending its academic accreditation, and is hailing a high employee retention rate and designation by Forbes magazine of being one of the top employers in Georgia.
Chastain also is a stalwart supporter of retaining the senior exemption in Cobb County for school taxes.
But he’s also frequently referencing what he thinks Democrats have in mind to in their attempts oust him, saying much of Pozniak’s support comes from “outsiders.”
“My opponent isn’t so much about our kids but to fulfill some sort of an agenda, more oriented toward more liberal social reforms and away from academics,” he said.
“It boils down to a power struggle and they want the power.”
Republicans hold a 4-3 majority on the board. Chastain is the only GOP member up for election this year; Post 6 will stay in Democratic hands and Post 2 in the Smyrna area is Democratic-leaning.
Those new representatives will replace outgoing members Charisse Davis and Jaha Howard, respectively, Democrats who were at the center of several mostly partisan disputes on the Cobb school board the last four years.
Chastain has twice been chairman in his second term, including in 2019, when he proposed a policy to ban board member comments.
He said it was necessary because some members had become “too political” in some comments that weren’t related to schools. Howard and Davis complained they were being censored, but Chastain defends the policy.
He also defended Superintendent Chris Ragsdale for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic response.
“He’s done a good job,” Chastain said. “We are getting back now close to where we were before and are planning for the future.”
He rattled off some areas of emphasis, including expansion of digital learning, improving Individual Education Program options and increasing school safety.
Pozniak has been critical of the Cobb school district for flagging reading scores at the third-grade level as well as others, and said Chastain is mistaken in asserting that “things are good enough.”
Chastain said it’s at the third-grade level “when you first see who is going to need some help. I think we’re doing as much as we can. COVID was a mess but the resources have come together” for a recovery.
He also took issue with criticisms that he and the Republican majority on the board haven’t been responsive to some parents and students.
“Who are we talking about?” Parents and their children’s educations? Our policies and curriculum are aligned with state standards,” he said, adding that the Cobb school district is “building on success.
“We’re doing well for a school district that’s so diverse,” Chastain said, adding that “there’s this desire on the part of the Democrats to take power.”
A Wheeler High School graduate, Chastain doesn’t think his alma mater needs a name change, as some in that school community and beyond have been advocating due to Joseph Wheeler’s role as a Confederate general in the Civil War.
The board hasn’t taken up the issue since a board majority is required to add meeting agenda items other than those submitted by the chairman and superintendent.
That’s another controversial matter that’s come up in Chastain’s second term, as was a vote last year to ban the teaching of Critical Race Theory. A board discussion wasn’t allowed, and the Democratic members abstained, but Chastain said the topic is “still relatively new.
“It’s difficult to define,” he said. “We’re trying to make sure that there’s no curriculum that limits a child’s perspective about their color and ethnicity.”
The Cobb school district has come under fire for some finance and spending issues, including some that were part of a special review by Cognia, the district’s accrediting agency, pertaining to COVID-19 safety measures.
“That became a dumpster fire,” he said of the Cognia review.
While Pozniak has said the district’s finances and contractual procedures are “opaque” and lack transparency, Chastain said he’s confident that the district’s procurement processes are solid and claims that the district “is a great steward of taxpayer money.”
Chastain said maintaining Cobb’s academic progress is his ultimate priority, and cited recent managerial issues and changes in the Gwinnett school district, the largest in Georgia, as a cautionary tale.
Once a solid conservative area, Gwinnett now has a Democratic majority on its school board that terminated the contract of 25-year superintendent Alvin Wilbanks in 2021, a year before his planned retirement.
“What has happened in Gwinnett—I don’t want that to happen here,” he said.
“Cobb is still the best place to teach, lead and learn in metro Atlanta. If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.”
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After leaving home to attend college, teach and become an educational administrator, Catherine Pozniak has returned to her Northeast Cobb roots to put that background to local use.
When she moved back to her family home in 2020 following the death of her father, she said she hadn’t thought about running for elected office.
But the effect of the COVID-19 response on schools and eventful developments in the Cobb County School District where she graduated prompted her run for the Post 4 seat on the Cobb Board of Education.
Pozniak, 43, is an educational consultant and Democrat who’s challenging two-term Republican incumbent David Chastain for the post that represents her alma mater, Sprayberry High School, as well as the Kell and some of the Lassiter clusters.
“This is an important moment in time in education,” Pozniak said in a recent East Cobb News interview. “This is an opportunity now to build something better than what is there now.”
You can visit Pozniak’s campaign website by clicking here; East Cobb News has interviewed Chastain and will be posting his profile shortly.
In addition to addressing what she says are lagging test scores and curriculum issues—especially for grade-school reading—Pozniak also said she is running on behalf of parents, students and other stakeholders who feel they’re not being heard by the current board majority.
“My opponent is saying that things are good enough,” Pozniak said. “But for so many families and students, they are not good enough.”
Although she is a first-time candidate in the political world, her candidacy quickly caught notice. Neither she nor Chastain had a primary opponent, but over the summer, she outraised him with more $20,000 in contributions.
He held a fundraiser at the Atlanta Country Club and both are reporting having raised around $45,000 each.
With Republicans holding a 4-3 majority, party control of the school board is on the line, and the highly-watched contest has led to mutual and even third-party mudslinging.
Republican legislators also have said that if Pozniak is elected and Democrats gain control of the school board, Superintendent Chris Ragsdale will be replaced and Cobb schools will indoctrinate students in social and cultural issues instead of basic academics.
Despite the charged rhetoric, Pozniak said she’s been encouraged with what’s she seen, heard and learned on the campaign trail.
“I’m optimistic about the involvement from the community on both sides,” she said. “People get how important the school system is. It’s pretty remarkable how a school board race is getting this kind of attention.”
Pozniak, a 1997 Sprayberry graduate, earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Sydney in Australia, a master’s from Cambridge University in Britain and an educational leadership doctorate degree from Harvard.
She taught on a Native American reservation in South Dakota and was an assistant secretary in the Louisiana Department of Education. She currently consults on educational fiscal policy for Watershed Advisors.
Her priorities include improving the Cobb school district’s literacy curriculum, which she says “is lowly rated and not founded in the science of reading.”
She said she wasn’t pushing for a particular curriculum to replace it, but hears from teachers “who say they’re frustrated” and that “kids aren’t reading proficiently.”
As a school board member, she said it would be one of her primary responsibilities to help set academic expectations for the Cobb district, the second-largest in Georgia.
Pozniak also has been critical of Cobb’s algebra curriculum and noted the Cobb school district’s 50.5 percent score in that portion of the Georgia Milestones end-of-course test.
“That’s even lousy for high school students in Post 4,” she said, arguing that Cobb needs a comprehensive math curriculum.
On the subject of the senior tax exemption for schools, Pozniak said she doesn’t favor revisiting that—Chastain has been adamant that it should not be touched—and said it’s a matter for the legislature to take up.
On fiscal issues, Pozniak said the Cobb school district is not as transparent as it should be. She said that not all contracts are made publicly available before board meetings or even voted on.
“Except for SPLOST [construction and maintenance projects whose contracts are required to be disclosed by law], you really don’t see that in Cobb. It’s really an opaque system.”
“That’s a $2.9 million contract,” she said. “To not have it come up for approval, it’s stunning. There’s no oversight.”
Chastain, the current chairman, Pozniak said, “has been part of how we got to this point. There’s an erosion of transparency and accountability and he hasn’t taken any measures to change that.”
Pozniak has tried to steer clear of cultural wedge issues that have flared up recently on school boards across the country.
She called the clamor over Critical Race Theory—the teaching of which the Cobb school board banned last year—as “political theatre” and said that’s not a concern she’s hearing from parents.
“It’s not about issues that are hot-button issues,” she said. “It’s about what is going on in the schools and the students’ experiences there.”
As for diversity, equity and inclusion issues that also have been raised in schools, including Cobb, Pozniak said she understands “why the partisan narrative gets the play that it does.
“But not until recently was this an issue. It’s just where we are.”
She said the opportunity she sees this year “is to get educators on board” to help address learning issues in the wake of COVID-19 disruptions.
“I have a crossover of bipartisan support,” she said, “parents of kids with dyslexia, special-education students. These are very frustrated parents who are looking for something better.”
Pozniak has been accused of taking campaign contributions from outsiders. Her biggest donation, $3,000, is from Democrats for Educational Equity.
There’s not much publicly available information, but it’s a Washington, D.C. political action committee that “is dedicated to helping to elect a new generation of leaders, who will bring their shared experiences for the goal of educationalequity,” according to information Pozniak provided at the request of East Cobb News.
She said that “I am one of many educators that Democrats for Educational Equity supports, but being an educator is not a requirement.”
Pozniak said most of her other campaign donors are from those oriented around education issues or people she knows.
“If they’re not a friend, they’re a friend of a friend.” she said.
“They know what I’m trying to accomplish,” Pozniak said, adding that a number of local contributors, including educators, are doing so anonymously.
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A float and participants at Walton’s 2021 homecoming parade. Photo courtesy of Amanda Brown
Two high schools in East Cobb are having homecoming parades this week that will affect traffic in some areas.
On Wednesday, a portion of Holt Road will be closed from 6-7 p.m. for the Wheeler homecoming parade.
The route starts at Grace Marietta Church (675 Holt Road) and heads south to the school (375 Holt Road) and the student parking lot behind the football stadium.
That’s where a festival will be taking place until 8 p.m. There will be food, games and other activities that are open to the public.
On Friday, the Walton homecoming parade takes place, starting at the Target store at Merchants Festival at 2:15 p.m. The route continues westbound on Providence Road, then to Pine Road and Bill Murdock Road before arriving at the school (1590 Bill Murdock Road).
The class councils for each grade will compete for best float, and the Walton band will lead the athletic floats and homecoming court in the parade.
Both football teams are battling for playoff berths in the Georgia High School Association’s Class 7A Region 5.
Wheeler is 4-3 and will be playing Osborne, which is 5-2. Walton is 5-2 and will be playing host to Cherokee.
Kickoff times for both games are 7:30 p.m. Friday.
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The Cobb County School District has modified a new crisis alert system after an employee accidentally triggered a Code Red signal in 11 schools this week.
Superintendent Chris Ragsdale made brief, prepared comments at a Cobb Board of Education meeting Thursday night but didn’t give many specifics, including the names of the schools.
He said it was a “human error,” and not the new system itself, that led to the inadvertent Code Red alert at 1:30 p.m. on Monday, putting the affected schools on a short lockdown.
The Cobb school district recently switched to a new crisis alert system provider and said it would conduct Code Red drills on all 112 school campuses this school year.
The district spent $2.9 million to purchase the Centigex system, which was dropped by the Charlotte-Mecklenberg school district in North Carolina when parts of the system weren’t working properly.
That replaced AlertPoint, which cost the Cobb school district $5 million when it was implemented in 2017.
But that system malfunctioned in 2021 when all 16 Cobb high schools were put on lockdown due to what district officials said was a deliberate cyber attack.
Ragsdale also would not elaborate on what the changes were to the new system, called CrisisAlert System, saying that “training will be repeated to certain groups of employees.”
Nor would he saw how one employee could have triggered such an alert.
“The steps we have taken will reduce the chance of human error,” he said, adding that he couldn’t explain more because a personnel matter also is involved.
“I apologize that we have to engage in these kinds of drills,” Ragsdale said. “This is the world in which we live and we must take every step possible to ensure our students and our staff are safe.”
The Cobb school board voted Thursday night to approve a $2.8 million roofing contract for Mt. Bethel Elementary School in East Cob that is expected to be finished by July 2023.
The board also approved a contract to spend $419,518 co purchase 11 2023 Chevrolet Tahoe police vehicles for use by the Cobb County School District’s police department.
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The Cobb Board of Education will be asked Thursday to spend $2.836 million to replace the roof at Mt. Bethel Elementary School in East Cobb.
That request is coupled with a $1.14 million roof replacement request for Kennesaw Mountain High School that will be presented during a work session Thursday afternoon and is expected to be acted on during a voting session Thursday night.
The work session begins at 3 p.m. and the voting session starts at 7 p.m. in the board room of the Cobb County School District central office, 514 Glover St., Marietta.
The full agendas for the public meetings can be found by clicking here. An executive session follows the work session.
Funding for the Mt. Bethel and Kennesaw Mountain roof projects comes from the Cobb Education SPLOST V sales tax collections. According to an agenda items, both projects are expected to be finished by July 2023.
Also on the school board’s agenda is the request for a $419,518 contract to purchase 11 2023 Chevrolet Tahoe police vehicles from Hardy Chevrolet, Inc. for use by the Cobb County School District’s police department.
The funding for that also comes from SPLOST V, which continues through the end of 2023.
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Four high schools in East Cobb reported graduation rates of 90 percent or higher in the Class of 2022.
The Georgia Department of Education released district- and school-level figures on Thursday, with Harrison High School leading the Cobb County School District with a 97.2 percent graduation rate.
Lassiter High School in East Cobb was second at 97 percent, followed by Walton at 96.5 percent and Pope at 96.2 percent. Kell graduated 91.3 percent of its seniors this year.
Sprayberry had a graduation rate of 88.2 percent and Wheeler’s is 86.8 percent.
Federal law requires that graduation rates must be calculated by including all students expected to graduate in 2022, including those enrolled for a single day.
The Cobb County School District reported an overall graduation rate of 87.4 percent, second in the metro Atlanta area to Fulton County schools (89.3 percent), according to a district release.
The state average of 84.1 percent is an all-time high.
The Kell graduation rate of 91.3 percent is 2.4 percent better than 2021, and Sprayberry’s rate rose 1.9 percent from last year, according to the Cobb school district.
The district said that its graduation rate would be 92.6 percent if calculated to include students who were enrolled for at least two years, 95.2 percent for three years and 96.5 percent for students in the 16 traditional high schools enrolled all four years.
The Georgia Department of Education has full scores that you can read through by clicking here.
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From L-R: (l-r) Courtney Green of the Cobb Schools Foundation; Brenda Reid of Publix; Cobb School Superintendent Chris Ragsdale; Cobb Schools Foundation Executive Director Felicia Wagner. Photo Courtesy Cobb County School District
Publix Super Markets has awarded a $175,000 donation to the Cobb Schools Foundation as part of its “Tools for Back to School” campaign.
The foundation is a non-profit organization that supports students, teachers and educational needs in the Cobb County School District.
“Tools for Schools” includes participation from Publix patrons during the month of July, resulting in a donation to Cobb schools that was the largest in the state of Georgia.
The donation of gift cards will be used to purchase basic learning materials like pens, markers, crayons, and notebooks, particularly for students who are economically disadvantaged.
A district release said an estimated 50,000 of its 107,000 students fit that description, and their teachers often have had to buy those materials for them.
“Cobb Schools Foundation received the largest donation in the state of Georgia for this campaign,” Brenda Reid, the Publix community relations manager for the Atlanta region, said in the release. “We appreciate the generosity of our customers in donating to the school systems and foundations in our 7-state service area. Thank you for the partnership and all the great work Cobb School District does year-round.”
Said Felicia Wagner, the Cobb Schools Foundation executive director, said of Publix: “They can know that their support at the register is appreciated and is helping students in their own community. This donation will be distributed throughout our schools to serve students in need as well as teachers who are doing all that they can to create the best learning experience for students.”
For more about the Cobb Schools Foundation, click here.
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!
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!
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!
Walton and Wheeler students produced collective SAT scores in 2022 that are among the top 10 high schools in Georgia.
According to data released by the Georgia Department of Education, Walton’s 517 test-takers produced a combined score of 1,255, third in the state.
Wheeler, which had 296 students take the SAT this spring, had a score of 1,211, tied for 10th. Lassiter and Pope scores were right behind.
The Scholastic Aptitude Test is administered every spring for seniors. They are tested on evidence-based reading and writing and math.
The maximum score is 1,600 (achieved by a current Wheeler student in May, when he was a sophomore), with 800 scores being the limit in the two portions of the test.
The average individual SAT score is 1,068, and five of the six East Cobb high schools surpassed that in 2022.
Overall, students in the Cobb County School District produced a mean score of 1,111, according to a release issued Wednesday by the school district.
Those figures are higher than the national and statewide averages. The national mean score in 2022 is 1,028, and in Georgia it’s 1,052.
Cobb students posted a reading and writing mean score of 545 and a math mean score of 566. A total of 4,813 Cobb students took the test in May.
Although most of the 2022 scores are slightly down from 2021, an additional 1,362 Cobb students took the SAT this year, a jump of 30 percent from last year, according to the Cobb school district.
Cobb students also scored higher than their counterparts in large school districts in metro Atlanta, according to state education department figures.
Fulton’s mean score is mean score is 1,101, Gwinnett’s is 1,097, Cherokee’s is 1,091, Paulding’s is 1,032, Forsyth’s is 1,014, DeKalb’s is 1,000 and Atlanta’s is 947.
Fayette County schools led metro Atlanta with a mean score of 1,132.
“I cannot say enough about how proud I am of our teachers and the entire team,” Cobb Superintendent Chris Ragsdale said in the release. “Despite all the uncertainties and distractions of teaching and learning in a pandemic, our teachers remained focused on what is best for students. The commitment to high-quality classroom choices, supported by our Board during the pandemic, is a primary factor that led to the highest SAT scores in the metro area.”
What follows are full scores for the six high schools in East Cobb, followed by the Top 10 schools in the state.
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Khan Nguyen, a junior in the STEAM magnet program at Wheeler High School, received a perfect score on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) in his first time taking the test.
His mother, Tuyet Anh, sent word of his accomplishment, along with the photo, and some additional information.
She says he took the SAT in May and got the score of 1,600. According to the Princeton Review, the average SAT score is 1,068, as of 2018.
His mother says Kyan, 15, is active in Wheeler’s math team, Science Olympiad and music outreach activities. He also works as a part-time tutor and also enjoys reading, playing the piano and playing soccer with his friends.
His one-on-one tutoring sessions, she reports, “have helped Kyan understand how different people have different strengths, and it is a real pleasure to see his peers succeed where they had struggled before.”
She adds that he’s interested in biotechnology and biomedical engineering and has a mild interest in business.
His college plans are to apply to a number of colleges, including Northwestern, Georgia Tech and Brown.
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October’s just around the corner, and we’re starting to get word of Halloween-related events around the community for the public to enjoy.
Among the organizations taking part is the Mabry Middle Foundation, which will have a Haunted House event Oct. 22 that includes an immersive Halloween experience.
They’re calling it “The Fear Master’s Lab,” and it’s centered around the story of a professor driven MAD by his students and parents and just “wants payback for all the sleepless nights.”
According to the program promo, “things take a toxic turn though when he creates a laboratory specifically designed to extract people’s deepest and darkest fears and turn them into tools to haunt their nightmares.”
The event takes place from 7-10 p.m. at the Mabry Middle School campus (2700 Jims Road) and you can find more information and order tickets by clicking here.
According to a Foundation release, “The Fear Master’s Lab is aimed at providing a safe, local Halloween experience for area students while still providing the highest-level fright factor and entertainment. This event is the first of its kind for the East Cobb community.”
There also will be a pumpkin boutique selling professionally decorated pumpkins and a kids area (ages 10 and under) with games, crafts and other activities.
Proceeds from the ticket sales will be used by the foundation to support academic programs and facility improvements at the school.
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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!
Three employees of schools in East Cobb were honored this week by the Cobb County School District.
They’re among the district’s classified employees of the year, which goes to those working in support staff positions: secretaries, custodians, nurses, food service staff, bus drivers, paraprofessionals, fleet maintenance and other categories.
The honors were announced during a luncheon this week at Roswell Street Baptist Church and are given at the elementary, middle and high school levels.
Just as was done last week with retired Cobb school district employees, the individuals were honored over the last two school years, since the event has been suspended for COVID-19 reasons.
District-level classified employees of the year from 2020-22 include Kathleen Riewerts (in the photo above), who is the Food and Nutrition Services manager at Daniell Middle School.
For the 2022-23 school year, school nurse Susan Murphy of Murdock Elementary School and Terri Robbins, the school secretary at Kell High School, were district-level winners.
They posed for the photos with their families and Cobb school superintendent Chris Ragsdale.
“I love Kell, especially because we have such a wonderful team, Robbins said in a Cobb school district release. “I have the best principal. It’s a job that I am happy to go to every single day. I look forward to it. It is just the team that makes the whole experience worthwhile.”
“I have a love for food. I come from a big Italian family, and I love to be able to share that with the children and teach them about nutrition and food and different tastes and stuff,” Riewerts said in the release.
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Cobb school board chairman David Chastain is accusing his November election challenger of “trying to score some cheap political points” in comments she made about a special review conducted last year by the Cobb County School District’s accrediting agency.
In a campaign e-mail sent Wednesday, Chastain accused Catherine Pozniak of being “a politically activist opponent” for her criticisms of the board regarding the special review.
Chastain, a Republican, is vying for his third term representing Post 4, which includes the Kell and Sprayberry clusters and a portion of the Lassiter attendance zone. Pozniak is a Democrat who graduated from Sprayberry and only recently returned to East Cobb after attending college, teaching and being a school administrator in other states.
Near the top of Chastain’s e-mail was a headline entitled “The Discredited COGNIA Report,” under which he said he was “very proud of the SUCCESSFUL and VIGOROUS defense of our school’s accreditation.
“Engaging in selfish political behavior, which puts our students at risk, is not the type of leader we need on our Cobb school board.”
In March, just before Cognia, the Alpharetta-based accrediting agency, reversed findings of its special review, Pozniak blamed the board’s Republican majority for “not having a clear plan for teaching and learning.”
In an interview with the Cobb County Courier, Pozniak said “I think it’s unfortunate the way the board leadership has approached this, which is to not talk about it at all. These are not unfixable problems and issues, and while they are avoiding the topic, they are also not coming to a solution.”
In his e-mail this week, Chastain included the first part of the first sentence and highlighted it in yellow, as well as her charge about the board “avoiding the topic.” He didn’t cite the specific source except to say “local media blogs.”
Under an italicized headline in red, “NEWS ALERT,” Chastain said “the problem for my politically activist opponent comes directly from the recanted accreditation report. . . . ‘there was no real issue.’ ”
That’s a quote from Cognia president Mark Elgart, who in announcing the reversal told the board that the agency’s special review team “did not adequately contextualize or incorporate factual evidence provided by the School District, drawing erroneous conclusions.”
The initial report, issued in November 2021, gave the district a year to make improvements in several areas. All of them were rescinded with the exception of board governance.
The Cobb school board has a 4-3 Republican majority, and the Post 4 race could determine party control.
Chastain is the only Republican board member on the ballot this year.
He easily defeated Democrats in his first two elections in a post considered to be strongly conservative.
But Pozniak has outraised Chastain, who held a fundraiser last month at Atlanta Country Club.
She has $18,357 in cash on hand and has raised $7,505 since January, according to her latest financial disclosure reports. In all, Pozniak is reporting she has raised nearly $23,000.
Chastain, a Wheeler High School graduate, has collected $5,625 in the first six months of 2022 and has $4,850 on hand.
In his e-mail this week, Chastain wrote that Cognia realized it had been “played” by “some political activists and some rogue board members,” a reference to the board’s three Democrats who asked the accreditor to conduct a review.
He accused Pozniak of “joining the assault on our students and our schools.”
Pozniak told East Cobb News that in her discussions with parents on the campaign trail, “Cognia doesn’t come up” that often.
She said the comments she made to the Courier were published on March 3. The following day, the school board announced a special-called meeting for March 7, at which the accrediting agency reversed the findings of the special review.
“My quotes in that article were not in reaction to Cognia’s reversal–it hadn’t happened, yet,” she said
“I hear a lot from parents who have reached out to him and they hear nothing from him,” Pozniak said of Chastain.
“People who have not heard back from him are now being reached out to under these circumstances,” Pozniak said, a reference to Chastain’s campaign e-mails.
She said she’s seen the most recent e-mail and said it contains “petty stuff.”
Pozniak also called out board leadership for not publicly responding to more recent issues, including complaints of a new East Side Elementary School logo resembling a Nazi symbol, and school safety measures that include hiring armed non-police personnel at schools.
“People are dissatisfied with what they are seeing from this board,” she said. “There’s not one issue that’s driving this race.”
East Cobb News contacted Chastain seeking comment, and he requested questions via e-mail. He replied late Friday afternoon.
When asked to identify the “political activists,” Chastain said the following, via a campaign media coordinator:
“It has been extensively documented who has sought to tarnish the Cobb County School District’s great reputation, in public comments, emails, social media comments, and those who aggressively seek face-time on television and the radio. In addition, a quick review of Pozniak’s campaign donation list clearly demonstrates groups and individuals who do not share Cobb County values in limiting instruction to the state standards.
“We will consider putting some links on our website and other platforms in the very near future to assist voters to understand who those groups or individuals are. On the first review, it seems like it would be a good addition to our messaging and education of the voters.”
He also was asked who is receiving the e-mails and whether some of the addresses may have come from a list kept by fellow East Cobb board member David Banks, who sends out an occasional e-mail newsletter.
Chastain said that “while it is unfortunate that Catherine Pozniak has only lived in Cobb County for only a few months as an adult, the harsh reality is that her failing campaign simply does not have the right to know where our numerous email lists come from and how far our broad base of support extends.”
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Among the recent retirees of the Cobb County School District are several people who served at schools in East Cobb for more than 30 years.
They were honored last week as part of a 335-member group that retired in 2020, 2021 and 2022 in the first such event since before the COVID-19 pandemic.
The luncheon at Roswell Street Baptist Church featured remarks from Cobb schools Superintendent Chris Ragsdale, and several board members were also present.
Among the longest-serving retirees were Shane Amos, a teacher and coach at Walton High School for 36 years; Wanda Waldrop, a custodian at Addison Elementary School, who served 35 years; and Nancy Janas, a teacher at Mountain View Elementary School for 35 years.
Also honored was Mary Ortland, the longtime nurse at Dodgen Middle School.
The retirees worked a combined 7,523 years in the Cobb County School District.
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!
