Two members of the Cobb Board of Education have asked for discussions at Thursday’s work session on virtual learning and reopening plans.
There’s also a request for the board to approve emergency funding for electrical repairs at Mountain View Elementary School in East Cobb.
The school board’s work session starts at 10 a.m. Thursday, followed by an executive session and a business meeting.
The work session and business meeting will be conducted in public via Zoom, and you can watch here or on Channel 24 on Comcast Cable. Meeting agendas can be found here.
Board member Charisse Davis, who represents the Walton and Wheeler clusters, has asked for the virtual learning discussion. Cobb schools began all-online on Sept. 17, and dealt with technology issues for the first three weeks.
Elementary and special education students can start returning to classrooms on Oct. 5 in a phased-in approach that continues with middle school students on Oct. 19 and high school students on Nov. 5.
Students can continue virtual learning, but parents must choose an option by Sept. 20, and cannot switch back for the rest of the fall semester.
The school board also will be asked to approve $350,000 to make electrical repairs at Mountain View Elementary School.
District staff said a lightning strike damaged the school’s electrical systems, and the contingency funding is for emergency repairs and to provide temporary power.
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Starting Wednesday the Cobb County School District will roll out 27 buses equipped with WiFi hotspots to assist students who need Internet connectivity while all-remote learning continues.
Those buses will be going to 23 separate locations and the buses will be available for Internet use 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.
The district said in an announcement Tuesday that funding is coming from the Georgia Department of Education.
The locations include the following apartment complexes in the Wheeler High School cluster:
Westminster Square (2401 Windy Hill Road)—Wheeler, East Cobb MS, Brumby ES;
Riverstone (899 Powers Ferry Road)—Wheeler, East Cobb MS, Eastvalley ES;
The district said that “the goal of the bus wifi program is to serve the maximum number of students who currently may not be participating in remote classes due to limited or no internet connectivity. Ideal locations around the county were determined by examining CTLS use and access.”
The district said it has distributed more than 300 WiFi hotspots to families and nearly 40,000 devices, with 38,000 requests for devices in the current school year alone
About 35,000 of those devices have been picked up.
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As students, parents, teachers and staff in the Cobb County School District prepare for a return to classroom learning starting in October, the district is providing COVID-19 case updates on a weekly basis.
The district reported that as of Friday, a total of 216 people have tested positive for the virus since July 1.
That’s a little more than double since “approximately 100” cases were confirmed in early August, also dating back to July 1.
As was the case last month, the district said it can’t be more specific about that information, including indicating how many staff and students have tested positive, or school locations where people have had cases of the virus confirmed by Cobb and Douglas Public Health.
The district is citing medical privacy laws “based on instruction provided by the Cobb and Douglas Public Health Department” for not saying more.
The weekly case figures will be updated every Friday through the end of the school year.
Cobb schools started all-remote on Aug. 17 due to what Superintendent Chris Ragsdale said was guidance from public health officials about “high community spread” of COVID-19.
Some staff and students have been on campuses and at district facilities, including athletes and others picking up textbooks and other class materials.
The district is the second-largest in Georgia with more than 112,000 students, and is Cobb County’s largest employer with more than 13,000 front office staff, principals, teachers, and support workers on the payroll.
Students will be able to return for in-person classes on Oct. 5, starting with K-5 and special education, followed by middle school on Oct. 19 and high school on Nov. 5.
School district staff members are also returning to schools on phased-in basis: elementary, Sept. 21; middle school Oct. 5 and high school Oct. 22.
As of Monday afternoon, there were 18,505 overall COVID-19 cases in Cobb County, the fourth-highest total in the state, with 1,520 coming in the last two weeks.
A total of 2,263 cases have been confirmed between ages 0-20 in Cobb, the fourth-highest of any age group.
But after a summer spike, Cobb’s average cases per 100,000 over the last two weeks has dropped to just under 200. One-hundred cases per 100,000 is considered high community spread, but Ragsdale said he was looking at getting that metric between 100-200 in order to reopen schools.
At one point, that figure was well over 400 cases per 100,000. Cobb has 413 deaths, second only to Fulton County, and 1,670 overall hospitalizations.
After the reopening announcement, the Cobb school district outlined health and safety protocols that include mask requirements for everyone and deep cleaning procedures.
The district said that anyone testing positive for COVID-19 will self-isolate for 10 consecutive days from the date of a positive test and is asymptomatic.
Students and staff also will have to go into quarantine if they have a suspected case and symptoms of the virus or were within close contact with someone who’s positive.
All schools will have designated isolation areas for anyone with COVID-19 symptoms.
Parents are in the process of choosing whether to let their students return to school or to remain all-remote through the end of the fall semester.
That deadline is this Sunday, Sept. 20. Once parents choose an option, they cannot change their minds before the end of the semester. More information can be found by clicking here.
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Following Superintendent Chris Ragsdale’s July 16 announcement that the 2020-2021 school year would start with a fully remote learning model, the Cobb Schools Food and Nutrition Services began preparing to provide breakfast and lunches to students in a way that best supports the remote environment.
Starting on September 14, parents will be able to pick-up free meal kits for the entirety of the week. Meal kits are available to all students ages 0-18 and children do not need to be enrolled in Cobb County School District.
Most Cobb schools will schedule meal kit pick-ups. Specific times and dates can be found on the Cobb Food and Nutrition Services (FNS) website. Families do not need to pre-order meal kits.
Food-Distribution Pricing
Meal kits are free for students, but family dinners and adult-only kits can still be ordered through the MyPaymentsPlus.com website. Families that would like to order more kits than they have students are also eligible to use their Free or Reduced-Priced benefits when ordering at MyPaymentsPlus.com.
Families who have not already applied should submit an application here to determine if they qualify for Free or Reduced-Priced benefits.
The to-go meal kits will include items that can be reheated at home. Reheating instructions and a menu will be provided in meal kits.
Food-Distribution Pickup
On the day of pickup, parents should plan to arrive at the school of their choosing at the designated time and date and let the Cobb FNS staff know how many meal kits are needed for children ages 0-18. Meal kits with breakfast and lunch meals will be provided and placed in the trunk or backseat of the car by Cobb FNS staff.
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The first round of the National Merit Scholarship process for a new school year is underway, and a number of students from East Cobb high schools have been named semifinalists.
They’re among 16,000 nationwide vying for a variety of college scholarships whose recipients will be announced in the spring:
To become a Finalist, the Semifinalist and a high school official must submit a detailed scholarship application, in which they provide information about the Semifinalist’s academic record, participation in school and community activities, demonstrated leadership abilities, employment, and honors and awards received. A Semifinalist must have an outstanding academic record throughout high school, be endorsed and recommended by a high school official, and write an essay.
From the approximately 16,000 Semifinalists, about 15,000 are expected to advance to the Finalist level, and in February they will be notifi ed of this designation. All National Merit Scholarship winners will be selected from this group of Finalists. Merit Scholar designees are selected on the basis of their skills, accomplishments, and potential for success in rigorous college studies, without regard to gender, race, ethnic origin, or religious preference.
LASSITER H. S.
Victoria Dutkiewicz
Aidan Payne
William Shutt
POPE H. S.
Allison D. Gentry
Ryan J. Meredith
Greg K. Park.
William G. Whitaker
SPRAYBERRY H. S.
Allison D. Mawn
WALTON H. S.
Sai Anoop Avunuri
Avi Balakirsky
Vedika Bhatnagar
Eric Brewster
Caroline Brooks
Tia Chacko
Jamison Clark
Emily Feren
Joseph Fisher
Cole Francis
Michael Fu
Nicholas Ge
Kathryn Gilk
Kamen Iliev
Alexander Krupp
Steven Liberman
Taneecia Natarajan Thirulokac
Aditya Palliyil
Emory Paul
Ronak Rana
Manuel Roglan
Shveta Shah
Banglue Wei
Grace Yan
Emily Yang
WHEELER H. S.
Vishaal Ganesh
Matthew House
Caroline Hugh
Anushka Jain
Vishaal Kareti
Dmitry Kozhanov
Oliver Long
David MacDonald
Samuel Maloney
Alexander Mena
Aryaman Mukherji
Michelle Namgoong
Nikki Nobari
Adetomi Oderinde
Elijah Reyelts
Manav Shah
Sanjay Srihari
Wesley Swanson
Aniketh Tadepalli
Rachel Toole
Erica Wu
Julie Yan
Charles Yu
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Cobb schools have put out a 16-page PDF with safety protocols and other measures that probably won’t answer all questions parents may have, but starting on Page 5 you’ll find more about the following:
Maintenance and daily cleaning
Transportation
Food service, virtual and in school
K-12 sample schedules
The tentative breakdowns for those returns are as follows: K-5 and special ed Oct. 5; middle school Oct. 19 and high school Nov. 5.
Starting Monday at 8 a.m., and continuing through Sept. 20, parents can choose which option—remote or in-person—they want for their children.
That option will continue through the end of the fall semester, and the Cobb County School District has said remote learning will be available for the rest of the 2020-21 academic year.
Teachers will be teaching students in their classrooms and remote at the same time.
Masks are required for all teachers and employees and students returning to campus, as well as support staff like bus drivers.
The district said that anyone testing positive for COVID-19 will self-isolate for 10 consecutive days from the date of a positive test and is asymptomatic.
Students and staff also will have to go into quarantine if they have a suspected case and symptoms of the virus or were within close contact with someone who’s positive.
The district said it will inform those affected to stay home and will notify school officials if they have tested positive, have symptoms, are waiting for test results or are exposed to someone.
All schools will have designated isolation areas for anyone with COVID-19 symptoms.
Cleaning and sanitizing
The district said it’s in the process of having a fogging system put in place before students return, and each school will have fogging equipment and disinfectant.
All areas of school buildings—classrooms, administrative offices, break rooms, cafeterias, gymnasiums, etc.—will be disinfected and cleaned daily, especially “high touch points,” including countertops, desk tops, door handles and chairs.
Hand sanitizers will be provided at every school, and at numerous locations, including school entrances, and “good hygiene measures” including frequent handwashing will be practiced.
Students will be encouraged to bring their own water bottles and to avoid sharing food or snacks.
Masks, meals and buses
Social distancing measures and mask-wearing will be mandatory, although the district’s protocols indicate it will be “sensitive to needs of students/staff with medical issues that make wearing a face covering inadvisable.”
Mandatory mask use also applies to students riding a school bus. Drivers will be required to wear masks, and buses will be disinfected after every route.
As for food service, students who remain at home will be able to continue to receive prepaid weekly breakfasts and lunches. “Individual schools will determine where meals are served” for students who return to school.
Classroom schedules
As for classroom instruction, the current four-day schedule for all-remote learning will continue, both for virtual and on school campuses.
Wednesday will continue to be a day for independent study and individual and small group teacher-student meetings.
We’ll be contacting school district officials to get more information about these and other reopening issues in the coming weeks. If you have any questions you’d like us to ask, please e-mail: editor@eastcobbnews.com.
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The Cobb County School District on Thursday announced the dates for students returning to classroom instruction, starting with K-5 and special education students on Oct. 5.
Superintendent Chris Ragsdale said in an announcement posted on the district’s website and social media channels that the tentative starting date for middle school students will be Oct. 19, and high school school students will return on Nov. 5.
Those are all tentative dates, based on any COVID-19 conditions in Cobb County. More details on the reopening plan can be found here.
Here’s more that was released by the district right before 11 a.m., and this story will be updated:
Today, we are pleased to announce that the three parameters of community spread, effective contact tracing protocol, and efficient testing timeliness impacting our decision to offer face-to-face instruction have all been trending in a positive direction. This news allows us to announce the start date for our phased plan to provide both face-to-face and remote learning environments. On the Monday following Fall break, October 5th, 2020, we plan to begin Phase One of our return to face-to-face instruction. We trust that everyone will continue to do everything we can to keep the numbers moving in the right direction.
As we previously indicated, you will be able to submit your choice for face-to-face or remote beginning at 8:00 AM on September 7th through the ParentVue portal. The choice portal will close at midnight on September 20th.
In a video portion of that presentation, Ragsdale also said the following:
“One critical aspect of our plan is that as parents choose either face-to-face or remote-learning classrooms, students will continue to be taught by their current teachers. Face-to-face and remote-learning students in the same class will receive the same instruction from the same teacher. This will prevent disruptions to existing relationships students have made with teachers and will protect teachers from being asked to do two jobs at the same time.”
Unlike Ragsdale’s original face-to-face learning plans that recommended but did not require mask-wearing, the district said today that masks will be mandatory for staff and students, in school buildings as well as on school buses.
Masks also will be required, “whenever possible, when teachers are teaching.”
Other safety protocols include social distancing when possible, hand sanitizing stations at multiple locations through school facilities, daily cleaning and limiting volunteers and visitors.
As for how breakfasts and lunches will be provided, the district is saying only for now that its food service staff “will will continue making sure our students have nutritious meals.”
The district said more details will be provided about reopening plans on Friday.
The Cobb school district was to have started the school year Aug. 1, but Ragsdale announced in June a delay to Aug. 17 as COVID-19 cases began spiking in the county and across Georgia.
The initial plan was to give parents a choice between classroom and virtual learning.
But in July, he told the Cobb Board of Education that the year would be starting online-only, due to continued high community spread of the virus.
Guidance from public health officials indicated that anything more than an average of 100 cases per 100,000 people is considered high community spread.
During mid-summer, that figure was well over 500 cases per 100,000. As of Wednesday, Cobb was averaging 235 cases per 100,000 over the last two weeks, within the range of what Ragsdale said he was targeting for a classroom return.
Those figures come from the Georgia Department of Public Health, which reported that Cobb County has 17,210 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 395 deaths, both among the highest figures in the state.
Ragsdale’s decision to switch to all-online learning angered some parents who staged rallies before the start of classes.
During the first two weeks of virtual learning, the district’s expanded online learning portal experienced several outages that further frustrated parents.
This week no seriously technology issues have been reported.
Parents will be able to select an online or classroom option starting Monday through Sept. 20.
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The Cobb Teaching and Learning System, the online learning portal the Cobb County School District expanded for a virtual start to the school year, experienced some more technical issues on Friday morning.
Around 1 p.m. Friday, the district sent out a message to parents saying that around 20 percent of CTLS users experienced intermittent issues due to a hardware failure involving Amazon Cloud Services.
The CTLS system was taken down entirely at 12:45 p.m. for technology repairs, according to the district, which said as of 1:40 p.m. the full CTLS system was functioning and that all users were able to log in.
The district also announced it was providing a real-time status update for CTLS. On the bottom of the CTLS homepage, users can click on the button (shown above) to see which parts of the CTLS system may be down.
They’ll be directed to a Status Monitor page that shows the status of the 23 components of CTLS. That page also indicates when one of those components may be scheduled for maintenance.
Friday’s issues were the third time this week that the district had to address what it continues to call “intermittent” problems with CTLS. The first week of school last week also was affected by numerous problems with logging in and other technology issues and crashes.
Some parents posting comments in response to the status update feature said they were trying to be patient and said they like CTLS when it works.
One parent commented on the district’s Facebook page about the status update: “Awesome—will this have intermittent problems as well?!”
The Cobb school district also said Friday it is overhauling its main website to make it “more user friendly and more responsive for users” and offered a preview of the new homepage that will be noticeable over the weekend.
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The Cobb County School District has received the first 750 of a supply of 2,600 Chromebook computers from a Norcross company to help meet virtual learning demands at the start of an online-only school year.
On Thursday the Stratix Corporation, which provides managed mobility services, announced it had delivered the first portion of the devices to the Cobb school district, which is trying to fulfill nearly 40,000 requests from students and their families.
Felicia Wagner, executive director of the Cobb Schools Foundation, a non-profit that provides financial and other assistance to district, issued this statement through Stratix:
“We want all students to have the tools and resources they need to achieve their goals and be successful. With Cobb students returning to school virtually this fall, we had an immediate need to get additional devices to the schools. We felt Stratix was the right fit. They were local to us, had access to the volume of devices we needed and went to great lengths to get us the devices while working within our budget.”
The cost of the acquisition was not disclosed, but the district also announced Thursday it had received another 750 Chromebooks donated by a collection of churches in Cobb County, with another 1,900 on the way.
North Metro Church raised $150,000 for computers for students in Cobb and Marietta schools, with half going to each district, per a Cobb school district release.
The Cobb school district received $8.1 million from the Cobb Board of Commissioners last month in federal CARES Act funding to build out its online learning portal.
When Commissioner Lisa Cupid asked why computer purchases weren’t part of the request, Cobb school superintendent Chris Ragsdale said he was confident the district could provide them. He said some Chromebooks earmarked for students in need had gone unused.
Before the school year began, he said the district received 32,000 requests for devices, and another 6,000 requests have been made since online classes began Aug. 17.
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As the Cobb County School District continues with online-only instruction, the head of a professional teachers organization in Georgia said that the classroom experience that awaits students when they return will not be the way it was before COVID-19.
In a commentary distributed to news organizations, Lisa Morgan of the Georgia Association of Educators asked parents “to please listen to us—the educators who you are asking to enter the school buildings in the midst of a pandemic.”
Unlike teachers’ organizations in other states, they are not unions.
The CCAE supported a July decision by Cobb school superintendent Chris Ragsdale to start the school year online-only, instead of giving parents an option of virtual or in-person learning.
Ragsdale has said that the cases per 100,000 people in Cobb—now averaging around 300 for the last 14 days—represents high community spread that’s not safe for students, teachers and staff.
Cobb school parents have expressed frustration with virtual learning and the lack of a timetable for returning to a classroom environment. Ragsdale said he will be guided by data, and not dates, in making that decision.
Under the district’s previously announced reopening plans, K-5 and special education students will return first, followed by middle school and high school students.
While the virus transmission rates and case numbers for children remains low, Morgan wrote that placing them in large group settings at schools poses a threat: “If the risk is 1 percent that any individual child will become sick, that means that in a group of 100 the chance that one of our students will become sick is 100 percent. Just as it is objectionable to you knowingly to put your children in a situation that will bring them harm, for any of our students to be harmed is unacceptable to us.”
She said that once students do return, “the adaptations necessary to mitigate the spread of Covid-19 will result in a classroom experience absent of the interactions that your child is missing now.”
Those include one-on-one encounters between students and teachers over homework and class assignments and students working together on projects in class.
Lunchtime will also be different: “The current plans for meals vary from system to system, but all include either smaller groups and social distancing in the cafeteria or meals being consumed in the classroom. The social-distanced cafeteria will, by necessity, be a mostly quiet space.”
Other tasks, such as cleaning and hand-washing, also will be time-consuming and disruptive, but they’re precautionary measures Morgan said must be undertaken.
“As much as we all wish returning to in-person instruction would allow us to engage with our students as we have always done, doing so is simply not possible,” she said. “The mode of instruction is not the issue we must solve. The realities of the virus and the continued high rates of transmission in our communities dictate that we must err on the side of caution and safety. While we all can agree that virtual instruction is not optimal, unusual times call for unusual measures that include sacrifice on everyone’s part.
“Working together to ensure that everyone is first and foremost safe and healthy will allow us to then work together to ensure everyone recovers academically, socially, and emotionally.”
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On August 24, 2020, Forbes announced that the Cobb County School District was being recognized as one of America’s “Best-in-State Employers.” Cobb Schools has been on the list both years since Forbes began the award in conjunction with Statista in 2019.
“We know teachers are the most important part of any student’s experience and this is another confirmation that we are putting our Team first, ” said Superintendent Chris Ragsdale. “Our motto of ‘One Team, One Goal, Student Success,’ is only possible when our employees actually believe it and get the support they need to achieve it. We are grateful for the back-to-back recognition because it shows that we are keeping the main thing, the main thing.”
Cobb Schools moved up one position from 2019—from #23 to #22 in the state. It is one of only two school districts to make the Top 25 in Georgia and landed ahead of notable Georgia companies such as The Home Depot, UPS, and Coca-Cola.
Forbes and Statista select Best-In-State Employers based on an independent survey of more than 80,000 working for companies of at least 500 employees. The surveys are administered using a series of online panels and provide a representative sample of the U.S. workforce.
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It”s already been a manic Monday for Cobb school students, teachers and parents and many others globally.
Zoom, the video teleconferencing platform that’s become heavily relied-upon during the COVID-19 pandemic, has crashed around the world.
We got a text from a Cobb schools parent shortly after 8 a.m. saying the Cobb Teaching and Learning System, the district’s instructional portal, was down.
The district said around 9:30 a.m. that CTLS is operational, but that since 8:10 a.m., “Zoom has been experiencing a worldwide outage. The problem is being worked on, District staff is in direct contact with Zoom executives, and currently, there is no timetable for its return. We will update our community via social media and email as soon as the situation is resolved.”
Zoom is how student attendance is marked and virtual class participation is conducted. The parent who texted us said Microsoft Teams is being utilized as a backup. The district said that alternative had some issues and was down at times last week.
CTLS had some technical issues at times during the first week of all-online classes in Cobb last week.
The district also said to parents Monday morning that “your student’s workload is still accessible. Your teachers will be contacting you with more information shortly.”
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Once a nearly all-white school, Wheeler has one of the most diverse student bodies in the Cobb County School District, as exemplified by its Class of 2020.
After an online petition was started this summer to change the name of Wheeler High School, a graduate of the East Cobb school has started one of her own to keep the name as it is.
“We have great memories of our friends and teachers and just the best years of my personal life. You have let them remove our statues you are not going to take this away from us,” she wrote in her introduction.”
Behensky’s effort comes two months after a group calling itself “Wildcats for Change”started a petition demanding that the Cobb County School District rename Wheeler.
The school on Holt Road is named after Joseph Wheeler, a former Confederate general who was readmitted to the U.S. Army after the Civil War and served in Congress. He is one of the few Confederate officers buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
The Wildcats for Change petition has more than 4,500 signatures, including that of Cobb Board of Education member Charisse Davis, who represents the Walton and Wheeler clusters.
Those seeking to keep the Wheeler name discussed their memories on the new petition, including Mark M., who said he was part of the school’s first graduating class in 1967:
“Changing the name of the school will do nothing to change history. Leave it alone.”
Cathy M., a 1977 graduate:
“I am from the South. My parents are from the South. This is our heritage, Southern Heritage. Those who are demanding that anything southern (names, statues, locations, etc.) be changed and destroyed are bigots. Instead of standing strong against those that want to destroy the South, the politicians, stores, companies, professional sports organizations, manufactures and many more cave and bow down to these lunatics.”
Todd H.:
“The school was never about a singular person, of whom I never knew existed. It was about the memory of all the people who I went to school with. Don’t sully the memory.”
Leslie G., who graduated in 1969:
“Don’t punish us for what our ancestors did. People we never knew and whose views we don’t share. It was just Wheeler, my alma mater. I never even knew who he was until this ridiculous idea came up a few months ago. Please don’t invalidate the youth of so many of us.”
During a Cobb school board meeting Thursday, Davis said she had received correspondence from a descendant of Joseph Wheeler “who wanted me to know he had turned his life around.”
Her comments came during a discussion about creating a committee to examine school naming and renaming policies.
Board member David Morgan made the proposal after he noticed that there are no schools in the 112-school Cobb district that are named after minorities.
Morgan didn’t refer to Wheeler, or to a similar petition begun to change the name of Walton High School, but said he wanted to craft a policy to reflect the diversity of the Cobb school district.
According to the district’s own data, Cobb’s overall student body of nearly 112,000 students is 37 percent white, 30 percent black, 22 percent Hispanic and six percent Asian.
Wheeler was for many years a nearly all-white school, but is now one of the most diverse in the Cobb school district. Georgia Department of Education figures from March showed that Wheeler had 811 black students out of a total enrollment of 2,159.
Among the notable alumni of Wheeler is Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Harold Melton, who is African-American and graduated in 1984.
The school board voted 4-3 to create a 10-member naming/renaming committee, and Davis said she wanted to serve. The panel will have three school board members, and each person on the seven-member school board will appoint a citizen from their posts.
Board member David Chastain, a Wheeler graduate who represents the Kell and Sprayberry clusters, voted against, saying he liked Morgan’s suggestion of a possible policy change but said “I don’t think we need to form a committee. . . . We do need to make this part of our consciousness as we move forward.”
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Cobb Board of Education member David Banks is coming under fire for making a reference to COVID-19 as the “China virus” in his weekly e-mail newsletter.
Banks, a three-term Republican from East Cobb, sent out a newsletter on Tuesday listing recent retirees from the Cobb County School District, and led with this sentence:
“Since the China virus is still of concern, the CCSD Retiree ceremony was canceled this year. “
Not long after that, Julia Hurtado, a Democrat who is running against Banks in the Nov. 3 election, posted a message on a private Cobb schools Facebook page saying that “I am heartbroken for any of the Asian kids this man represents,” and encouraged anyone bothered by what he had written to go to her website.
Other social media messages have expressed similar sentiments, and East Cobb News heard from a constituent of Banks, parent Jonathan Chen, whose children attend school in Post 5, which includes the Lassiter and Pope clusters.
He said he’s lived in Post 5 since 2010 and hadn’t heard of Banks, and thought the reference was xenophobic.
“I feel it is critical that he be held accountable for his words, especially since he has been tasked with the education of our children,” Chen said.
Chen, a pulmonary doctor with the Wellstar Health System, said it’s not wise to name a virus or pathogen after the location where it was discovered because “has the effect of casting blame on the area as the source of disease which can lead to discrimination, isolation, and even violence.”
Chen said if such an outbreak were to have originated in Marietta, “fear now arises that all Marietta residents are infected so consequently, they are viewed with suspicion, fear, and even hatred by residents of surrounding communities.”
He added that “calling the SARS-coV2 virus the China virus blames China and Chinese people for the virus,” and that he refers to it as the Coronavirus.
East Cobb News has left a message with Banks seeking comment.
UPDATED:
At 9:15 a.m. Sunday, Banks e-mailed this reply to East Cobb News:
“I read your article.
“I received less than 100 negative emails concerning the ‘China virus’ and all but one came from Democrat voters. This is not a ‘blast.’ Several thousands would be a blast. These people are racists and you carried their water. Don’t be used to divide.”
ORIGINAL STORY CONTINUES:
During a Cobb school board work session Thursday, two of Banks’ colleagues referenced the incident without mentioning him by name.
The board was discussing an anti-racism resolution that ultimately failed in a 3-3 vote, with Banks voting present. He said that resolution was unnecessary and read language from district’s non-discrimination policy.
Board member Jaha Howard made a motion to amend the resolution to include an apology by any board member who had said anything racist or offensive. That amendment failed.
Charisse Davis, who represents the Walton and Wheeler clusters, said before the vote that board colleagues have made slurs, and that “if we can’t condemn that as a board I don’t understand why we’re moving forward with this resolution.”
She and Howard were among the three black Democrats who voted against the resolution, saying it didn’t go far enough in condemning racism in the school district. Three votes in favor of the original resolution were the other white Republicans on the board.
It was the third time that the board attempted to come to a consensus on an anti-racism measure, following other local governments, including Cobb County, and metro Atlanta school districts.
The Cobb Board of Education on Thursday voted to purchase nearly four acres of land close to Walton High School for $2.65 million, adjacent to newly acquired land for a new softball and tennis complex.
After an executive session, the board voted 6-1 in two separate motions by Post 6 member Charisse Davis, who represents the Walton and Wheeler clusters.
The properties include 3.5 acres at 1483 Pine Road for $2 million, and 1.2 acres at 3753 Providence Road for $650,000 (indicated by the blue stars on the map above).
Those parcels are located next to 15.2 acres on Pine Road that the district purchased in November for $3 million (red star), after threatening the property owner, Thelma McClure, with eminent domain.
There’s a sign fronting that property on Bill Murdock Road, and across from the Walton campus, that it’s to be the future home of Walton varsity tennis and softball teams.
Their old facility is where the new Walton classroom is located, and the teams have been playing home competitions since 2014 at Terrell Mill Park.
Walton softball parents had been considering legal options under Title IX, a federal law banning sex discrimination in education.
The board didn’t discuss the additional land purchases at Thursday’s meeting. The only member to vote against was Jaha Howard of the Campbell and Osborne clusters.
Funding for the property acquisition comes from Cobb Education SPLOST V revenues. So will construction costs, but those have not been determined and there isn’t a timetable for that project.
The school board also voted 7-0 for a fiscal year 2021 budget of $1.3 billion. It includes using $31 million in reserves to close a $62 million deficit following state budget cuts in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis.
The budget maintains an existing property tax rate of 18.9 mills, includes step salary increases and there are no pay cuts or furlough days for employees.
The budget was amended to add $15 million in spending for COVID-related expenses.
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Cobb school superintendent Chris Ragsdale said Thursday he does not have a specific timetable for the return to classroom learning for students in the Cobb County School District.
During a virtual Cobb Board of Education work session, he reiterated previous statements he’s made that public health metrics—and not political considerations—will determine when face-to-face instruction can begin taking place.
He was responding to questions from school board members, and said that while some of those COVID-19 indicators are declining, Cobb County still has too high of a community spread for schools to reopen safely to students and staff.
“I know people are asking for a date, and I am not going to give one,” Ragsdale said during the work session, which was being live-streamed via Zoom.
He said Cobb County’s COVID-19 case statistics and issues relating to contact tracing and efficient testing will be the key factors in a decision to let students return.
Cobb is the second-largest school district in Georgia with 112,000 students, and started in all-virtual format last week.
But he said Cobb is still in the “high community spread” category for the virus, averaging more than 300 confirmed cases per 100,000 people over the last two weeks.
While that figure has come down in recent weeks, public health officials have said that the threshold for high spread is 100 cases per 100,000. Ragsdale said his target for reopening would be in the 200 cases per 100,000 range.
Rasgdale cited figures from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that lists Georgia 5th nationwide among states with the most COVID-19 cases, now with more than 243,000.
That’s a distant fifth behind California, Florida, Texas and New York. Cobb’s cases per 100,000 figure is not among the highest in Georgia, but its total cases have surpassed 15,000 and the county has the second-highest death toll with 352, according to the Georgia Department of Public Health.
Of Cobb’s confirmed cases, a total of 1,614 have occurred among people ages 20 and under. Those numbers also have gone up dramatically since the summer began. At the start of July, that age group had 282 reported cases. By the start of August, that figure had grown to 1,078 cases.
The number of daily COVID-19 cases in Cobb has declined since early July, but the county still is in the “high community spread” category. Source: Georgia DPH. For more data click here.
Ragsdale said the district is juggling several sets of guidance at the state and local levels, and on Wednesday got new guidance from Georgia DPH that had some good measures and others he said “go down the path of not being able to open schools.”
Chief among them as far as Cobb schools are concerned, he said, is social distancing in the classrooms, something he said isn’t going to be possible.
He didn’t mention the subject of masks, something the district was going to encourage but not require, before Cobb schools switched to an online-only start to the school year.
When asked by board member Randy Scamihorn when the numbers would be good enough, Ragsdale said, “That’s the most difficult part of this situation. Nobody knows.”
He said he doesn’t want Cobb to get in a situation of some other metro Atlanta school districts, which opened in person and then shut down in part or altogether due to a rash of COVID-19 cases.
Ragsdale said that while the district’s protocols “are greatly improved, it’s still not where it needs to be.”
He said there will be “huge question over Labor Day” and the district’s regularly scheduled fall break to see where virus case numbers and trends are heading.
“If we can avoid a spike and keep that trend going down, we’ll be in Phase 1 sooner rather than later,” Ragsdale said.
Once a decision to return is made, K-5 and special education students will be the first to be able to come back, followed two weeks later by middle school students. Another two-week break would take place before high school students would return.
Younger and special ed students would return first, Ragsdale said, to accommodate those parents who need to get back to work.
For the first time in six months, since the COVID-19 outbreak began, the school board heard public comments before the work session.
That public comment session was not shown on the district’s livestream feed, but board chairman Brad Wheeler indicated it was being recorded and would be shown later.
More than a dozen people signed up to speak on the issue of classroom return, and there have been two rallies in recent weeks from parents demanding face-to-face instruction.
“Our situation is not what everyone wants,” Ragsdale said, pledging that Cobb schools would reopen for classroom instruction “as soon as it’s as safe as possible.”
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A member of the Cobb Board of Education is asking for a discussion on the Cobb County School District’s policy of naming and renaming schools and its other facilities.
David Morgan
David Morgan, who represents the Pebblebrook and South Cobb clusters, is scheduled to present that matter at the school board’s work session Thursday morning.
The virtual meeting begins at 10 a.m. and you can watch here or on Channel 24 on Comcast Cable.
The agenda for the work session and other meetings on Thursday can be seen here.
Morgan’s agenda item is called “Facility Naming Policy and Renaming of Some Schools” but doesn’t go into any detail. East Cobb News has left messages for Morgan seeking comment.
The Walton and Wheeler renaming petition creators have said the namesakes of the schools were white supremacists. George Walton, one of Georgia’s signatories to the Declaration of Independence, was a Revolutionary War veteran, governor and senator.
Joseph Wheeler, a Confederate general during the Civil War, was later readmitted to the U.S. Army, served in Congress and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
East Cobb News contacted Charisse Davis, who represents Post 6, which includes the Walton and Wheeler clusters. She said because of the lack of details in the agenda item, she’s “not sure what Mr. Morgan will bring up.”
She forwarded a link to the school district’s naming policy and said that “members of the community have expressed concerns about the names of schools in Post 6, but also elsewhere in the county.”
She signed the Wheeler petition but has not said if she supports a Walton name change. The Walton petition, started by a student named Joseph Fisher, has more than 3,000 signatures.
Those behind the Wheeler petition (which has nearly 4,500 signatures) noted that the school opened in 1965, just as the Cobb County School District was preparing for integration.
Also during the work session, the school board will discuss an anti-racism resolution for the third time, after previous attempts to reach a consensus have fallen through.
The school board will hold a public forum on the proposed fiscal year 2021 budget at 9:30 a.m. Thursday, and final adoption is scheduled during a voting meeting to follow the work session and an executive session.
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A final public forum on the proposed $1.13 billion fiscal year 2021 budget and final adoption are on the docket for the Cobb Board of Education on Thursday.
The meetings will be held virtually, as they have been since the COVID-19 crisis began in March.
A virtual budget public forum will begin at 9:30 a.m. Thursday and you can watch by clicking here. There are instructions on that link for anyone who wishes to call in to comment and participate in the budget forum via Zoom.
The school board will hold a voting meeting after its 10 a.m. work session and an executive session. The agenda for the voting meeting includes an item for final budget adoption.
You can view the agendas for both public meetings on Thursday by clicking here. The board in July adopted a tentative budget, which is a formality before final adoption.
Although the Cobb County School District’s fiscal year began on July 1, a budget hasn’t been adopted due to delays in the legislature adopting the state budget. The Georgia General Assembly session was delayed because of COVID-19, and its final budget was passed in June.
Nearly half of Cobb County School District funding comes from the state, which is cutting that amount this year by $62 million.
To help close that gap, the district is proposing $31 million in reserve funds to help offset the state budget cuts. Cobb school funding under Georgia’s Quality Basic Education Act is expected to be $518 million.
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With the Cobb County School District starting online-only on Monday, the district has been rolling out new components of its Cobb Teaching and Learning portal this summer.
On Thursday, the CTLS Learn vertical was launched, and that’s where virtual classroom instruction will take place. Students can see class assignments there, and additional learning resources will be provided, including textbooks, along with class communications and moderated class chats.
CTLS Learn enables students to access on-demand digital sessions, assessment and feedback information and messaging with teachers.
Here are more details about CTLS Learn, including login instructions and how it integrates with CTLS overall, and the CTLS Parent portal.
The CTLS Parent portal also includes mobile access; in addition to the iPhone app released late July, an app for Android users also is available.
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The Wheeler Academic Booster Club has been asking for donations to procure 400 calculators for students with the start of a new school year next week.
Thus far the club reports they’ve nearly reached the halfway point of their goal, and that if “you are still inclined to help,” here’s what they’re looking for:
TI-36x Pro Calculators (New AND Used) can still be dropped off at Wheeler High School
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