After saying for several months he had not decided on whether to seek a fifth term to the Cobb Board of Education, Post 5 member David Banks made his retirement from that position official Sunday.
Banks sent via his newsletter a letter he wrote to Cobb Republican Party chairwoman Salleigh Grubbs that he won’t be candidate for the East Cobb post he has served since 2009.
He didn’t give a reason in the letter, although he has cited in previous interviews with East Cobb News (here and here) and other media outlets his age.
Two candidates in the Walton High School cluster—Republican John Cristadoro and Democrat Laura Judge—announced last year they will be seeking the Post 5 office.
A former technology executive, Banks, who is in his early 80s, said in the letter to Grubbs that “my goal has always been to provide the best and complete education opportunities for our students that is expected by the Cobb County community. That I have supported the teachers and staff faithfully during my years as a School Board member and encouraged every school to adopt and implement S.T.E.M. programs in all schools.”
Banks, who narrowly won re-election in 2020, has been a controversial figure for much of his previous 15 years on the board.
A strong Republican conservative partisan, he has clashed with former Democratic board members Charisse Davis and Jaha Howard on racial and cultural matters, and has used his newsletter to decry COVID-19 vaccines and to referr to the illness as the “China virus.”
He said in the letter announcing his retirement that his time in office “has been rewarding for me by giving me the opportunity to meet and know many Cobb County families and Cobb School District employees (who are the best). To support a stable school environment, for an excellent education program, and to encourage the Robotics programs in our schools.
“Hopefully my efforts has made Cobb County a better place to live and grow.”
He closed the letter to Grubbs by saying that as he ends his time in public office, “I will continue to support Republican conservative values and support the Cobb County Republican Party.”
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If you’re a Sprayberry High School graduate, you’re invited back to your alma mater next week for a final “walk-through” of the main classroom building that will soon be giving way to a new facility.
School officials have scheduled what they’re calling an “Alumni Walk” next Friday from 4-6 p.m., before the Yellow Jackets’ varsity basketball games.
In addition to the final “SWARM” there will be refreshments for the attendees.
The Sprayberry campus at Sandy Plains Road and East Piedmont Road opened in 1973, just as suburban growth in East Cobb was on the rise.
That was a year before Walton High School opened, and in recent years Walton and Wheeler have had replacement classroom buildings constructed.
That new six-year extension of the one-percent sales tax began collections on Jan. 1, and the Cobb County School District will soon take out a $100 million loan against that tax for 2024 to begin major construction projects.
Sprayberry has been a top priority on that list, and the estimated project cost is $67 million, and will follow ongoing construction of a new Career, Technology and Agricultural Education building and a new gymnasium.
The new classroom building will have 99 classrooms, administrative and guidance offices and a learning commons.
In a recent note to the Sprayberry community, principal Sarah Fetterman aid that 39 classrooms will be moved to modular units in the school’s main parking lot, and that entrance will be closed starting in the spring semester.
Other details of rebuild logistics and a contract for the construction project are still being formalized.
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Teachers and staff in the Cobb County School District will be getting a one-time bonus in their next paychecks in January.
That’s due to a $1,000 bonus for teachers and non-temporary workers that was pledged in December by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and funded through state coffers.
In addition, non-temporary part-time Cobb school district personnel will get a one-time bonus of $500 funded through local reserves.
Cobb Superintendent Chris Ragsdale asked for the Cobb Board of Education to approve the bonuses during a special-called organizational meeting on Wednesday.
The board approved the measure with a unanimous 7-0 vote.
Ragsdale explained that the bonuses will be included in employees’ paychecks by Jan. 19 or Jan. 24, and that they couldn’t have been done in December because of the holiday break.
Each teacher and non-temporary employee working more than half-time hours will get the $1,000 bonuses, while those working half-time or less will get the $500 bonuses.
The specific dollar-figure amounts for the locally-paid bonuses—from the Cobb school district’s general fund reserve—weren’t specified at the Wednesday meeting.
East Cobb News has left a message with the district seeking more information.
Kemp announced the statewide teacher and staff bonuses before the holidays as a means of aiding local school district’s retention efforts.
It’s part of a larger $300 million bonus program for all state employees. In includes $104 million in safety improvements at schools, with an estimated $45,000 going to each district for such things as security guards and technology upgrades.
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David Banks has not announced whether he’ll seek re-election to a fifth term on the Cobb Board of Education in 2024.
For the fourth consecutive year, Cobb Board of Education member David Banks has been voted vice chairman.
The four-term Republican from Post 5 in East Cobb was one of four votes during the board’s annual organizational meeting Wednesday.
Randy Scamihorn, a Republican from Post 1 in North Cobb, was voted chairman, getting his vote and those of the other three GOP members who make up the board’s majority.
Banks and Scamihorn are among the three Republicans whose current terms expire in 2024, along with outgoing GOP chairman Brad Wheeler.
Banks was nominated by Democratic member Tre’ Hutchins, but he cast the only vote in favor and his motion failed.
Banks, who is in the final year of his fourth term, has said he has not decided on whether he will seek re-election, due to age and other issues.
Two parents from the Walton High School cluster—Republican John Cristadoro and Democrat Laura Judge—announced their candidacies for the Post 5 seat last year.
Qualifying for local and state races is in early March, and the Cobb school board elections figure to garner serious attention.
The board has had a 4-3 Republican majority for the last three election cycles. But Banks and Wheeler had close races in 2020.
And the Georgia legislature will be called when it convenes next week to redraw Cobb school board electoral maps that a federal judge threw out in December.
That followed a federal voting rights lawsuit, alleging dilution of minority voting strength.
In 2021, the legislature reapportioned the Cobb school board maps to push Post 6 out of East Cobb and into the Cumberland-Vinings-Smyrna area.
Post 5 was redrawn to include the Walton, Wheeler and Pope clusters, while Post 4 includes Kell, Lassiter and Sprayberry.
The legislature has until Jan. 10 to draw new maps for the 2024 elections.
The Cobb school board also approved its 2024 meeting calendar, with its first regular meetings on Jan. 18.
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Cobb Board of Education electoral maps before 2021 reapportionment (left) and after (right), with the latter maps having been thrown out in federal court.
The Georgia legislature was ordered on Thursday to draw up new electoral maps for the Cobb Board of Education by mid-January.
A federal judge in Atlanta threw out maps lawmakers approved in 2021 that were submitted by Cobb Republican lawmakers and drawn by a law firm hired by the Cobb County School District.
Those maps pushed Post 6, which had included the Walton and Wheeler high school clusters, out of East Cobb and into the Cumberland-Smyrna-Vinings area.
A group of parents and progressive advocacy groups filed a lawsuit, claiming that the new maps were racially gerrymandered and violated the U.S. Voting Rights Act.
In her ruling granting an injunction to the plaintiffs (you can read the ruling here), U.S. District Court Judge Eleanor Ross concluded that it was “substantially likely” that the 2021 maps would be declared unconstitutional.
The lawsuit, spearheaded by the Southern Poverty Law Center, claims that the redrawn posts 2, 3 and 6—all held by the current Democrats on the school board—diluted minority voting strength.
Posts, 1, 4, 5 and 7—occupied by the Republican majority—had their minority voting percentages reduced curing reapportionment, with all four posts having at least 58 percent white constituencies.
The two posts in East Cobb have the highest percentage of white populations. While Post 5 didn’t change much (going from 66.97 percent to 67.24 percent), the Post 4 difference also was noticeable, rising from 57.24 percent white to 65.56.
David Chastain, one of the four GOP members of the school board, was re-elected to a third term in Post 4 last year.
In their lawsuit, the plaintiffs said that the 2021 map “bleaches the population of the northern districts,” a charge the Cobb school district has heatedly denied.
Ross gave the legislature until Jan. 10—two days after the 2024 General Assembly session begins—to draw new maps, which are considered temporary for use in the 2024 elections. The Cobb school district intends to appeal to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, seeking a stay of the judge’s order.
The Cobb school district was denied by Ross to join the lawsuit as a defendant, a decision that also is being appealed.
Ross also gave the plaintiffs and the defendant—the Cobb Board of Elections, which is not defending the current maps—until Jan. 12 to object to the redrawn maps, and Jan. 17 for the parties to respond to the other.
The 2024 Georgia primaries are May 21, with qualifying set for March.
Four of the seven Cobb school board posts are on the ballot in 2024, and three of them currently occupied by Republicans, including David Banks of Post 5 in East Cobb.
He hasn’t said whether he will seek a fifth term next year, but two first-time candidates announced earlier this year: Republican John Cristadoro and Democrat Laura Judge. Both are parents in the Walton cluster.
Post 5 was redrawn in 2021 to include the Walton, Wheeler and Pope clusters, while Post 4 includes the Kell, Sprayberry and Lassiter clusters.
In October, Ben Mathis, the lead attorney for the Cobb school district, accused the elections board of “a total surrender” to what he called “leftist political activists” who wanted to usurp the power of the legislature to redraw the Cobb school board maps.
That and another related message were posted on the Cobb school district website, including a charge from Mathis that the SPLC was trying “to impose their will over the Legislature, the Governor, and the voters of Cobb County.”
In a statement issued Friday through the SPLC, Sofia Fernandez Gold, associate counsel at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights under the law, said the order by Ross to redraw the maps “affirms the fundamental right of Black and Latinx voters of Cobb County to fully and fairly participate in the democratic process by having an equal opportunity to elect members of their choice to the Cobb County School Board.”
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The U.S. Department of Education this week launched an investigation into the Cobb County School District after receiving a complaint of what it calls “shared ancestry” discrimination.
The education department’s Office of Civil Rights is investigating the complaints under Title VI of the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars schools receiving federal funds from discriminating based on race, color and national origin.
Those complaints can also include harassment based on a person’s shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics.
The OCR, which has been stepping up probes since mid-October at the behest of the Biden Administration, did not specify the nature of the Cobb school district investigation, which was launched on Tuesday.
East Cobb News has not received a copy of the complaint and contacted the Cobb school district seeking information.
A district spokeswoman said in a statement Thursday evening that “despite social media posts made by familiar political activists which are simply not accurate, there is no antisemitism OCR complaint against the District. We are aware of a single complaint, at a single school, that isn’t related to antisemitism. All students in Cobb should feel safe and welcomed, we do not tolerate hate of any kind.”
The Cobb school district was the subject of public complaints by Muslim and Palestinian parents shortly after the Middle East conflict began for a message that went out informing school families of an “international threat” by Hamas.
The message said that “while there is no reason to believe this threat has anything to do with our schools, parents can expect both law enforcement and school staff to take every step to keep your children safe.”
Nazia Khanzada, mother of a Cobb fifth-grader, told the Cobb school board at its Oct. 20 meeting that the school district’s message “has directly resulted in hate, harassment and bullying threats directed at Cobb’s Arabic and Muslim students and their families, including myself.”
At the same meeting, Cobb superintendent Chris Ragsdale replied to the criticism by saying that “the information we received required us to let the entire district and parents know we were taking the threats seriously” and that “bullying and hate of any type will not be tolerated in the Cobb County School District.”
A Jewish Campbell High School student told the Cobb school board Thursday—the first night of Hanukkah—that she’s experienced several instances of anti-Semitism and doesn’t feel safe on campus.
A Palestinian high school student also complained that she and those like her are being silenced and demanded that the district provide more resources to increase diversity and inclusivity.
The district has come under fire in recent years for how it has treated anti-Semitic acts at schools, including swastika graffiti at Pope and Lassiter high schools in East Cobb.
A number of parents and citizens have asked the district to bring back a “No Place for Hate” educational program produced for schools by the Anti-Defamation League.
The OCR also launched Title VI investigations Tuesday at Montana State University, Union College in New York, the University of Cincinnati and Tulane University in New Orleans.
A number of other notable educational institutions, including the New York City Department of Education and Harvard University, also are being probed for complaints of anti-Semitic treatment since the start of the Middle East conflict.
If the Cobb school district is found to have violated Title VI, it could be asked to submit a plan for compliance or OCR could conduct its own enforcement.
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The Cobb County School District on Wednesday announced its schedule for 2024 commencement exercises.
All but two of the district’s 17 high schools will have graduation ceremonies at the Kennesaw State University Convocation Center from Monday, May 20 through Saturday, May 25.
Here are the graduation dates and times for the six high schools in East Cobb, all at KSU:
Wheeler: Tuesday, May 21, 7:30 p.m.
Pope: Wednesday, May 22, 7:30 p.m.
Kell: Thursday, May 23, 2:30 p.m.
Lassiter: Friday, May 24, 10 a.m.
Walton: Friday, May 24, 2:30 p.m.
Sprayberry: Saturday, May 25, 7:30 p.m.
More graduation information can be found here; the Cobb school district said it will update that link with more details about each school’s commencement and venue information, as well as links to live-streaming and ordering videos, in the spring.
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Dr. Shannon McGill, Principal at Timber Ridge Elementary School, is flanked by Ga. School Superintendent Richard Woods, at left, and Cobb superintendent Chris Ragsdale. CCSD photo
Ten schools in the Cobb County School District—seven of them in East Cobb—were visited last week by Georgia School Superintendent Richard Woods for earning the state’s designation as Literacy Leaders.
A total of 155 schools in the state were recognized for “exceptional achievement or growth in third-grade reading.”
Schools with 90 percent or more of their third-grade students reading at grade level or above were recognized for outstanding achievement, and schools with a 15 percent or higher increase from 2021-22 to 2022-23 were recognized for outstanding growth.
Seventy schools in Georgia were recognized for achievement, 84 for growth, and one school was recognized in both categories. In Cobb, eight schools were recognized for literacy achievement and two for literacy growth.
As reported in July, East Cobb elementary schools had some of the best scores in Cobb on the Milestones tests, with Timber Ridge (96.7 percent), Mt. Bethel (95), Tritt (94.9), Shallowford Falls (93.1), Murdock (92.2), Mountain View (91.6) and Sope Creek (90.1) leading the way with students at or above grade-level.
Austell, Ford and Riverside elementary schools were recognized for major increases in grade-level reading scores.
“The ability to read opens up the doors not only to the rest of a student’s education but to their ability to continue learning throughout their life,” Woods said in a release. “That’s why we are laser-focused on literacy at the Georgia Department of Education and as a state. These schools—our Literacy Leaders—are doing exceptional work to ensure every student is equipped with the lifelong skill of literacy, and it’s an honor to recognize them.”
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The Cobb Board of Education on Thursday approved a slate of legislative priorities requested by Cobb County School District officials that include a number of rollover items.
There also is a new item that follows in the wake of a school library controversy in the district over sexually explicit materials.
Superintendent Chris Ragsdale is asking that the Georgia General Assembly consider developing a book rating system, similar to movies, that he said would clear up confusion about what’s appropriate to have on school library shelves.
He said public school districts are required by federal law, for example, to follow the Children’s Internet Protection Act for discounted rates on internet and telecommunications services.
“We have nothing for books whatsover,” Ragsdale said during a board work session Thursday afternoon.”It just makes common sense to put a rating system in place.”
He said such a rating system—which he didn’t think would get legislative approval right away—would also provide guidance for publishers of school books and other materials.
There wasn’t any opposition from board members, but at a voting session Thursday night, Post 2 member Becky Sayler made a motion to remove language substituting a ban on “inappropriate” materials for “sexually explicit” and “pornographic.”
Sayler, one of three Democrats on the board, said “inappropriate” is a vague word that could create more confusion. Her motion failed 3-4 along partisan lines.
So did three other motions relating to the book rating priority, and she ultimately asked for a delay in a vote for another month for more public feedback.
“I truly cannot believe that we’re having a conversation again about what books should contain,” Ragsdale said during the work session. “It’s common sense. It speaks for itself.”
The Cobb school district has come under fire for removing three books that contained sexually explicit content fromseveral middle- and high school libraries, despite protests from some parents that the district was engaging in book banning.
At the October board meeting, Sayler proposed a change in the book policy that would have created local media committees to provide feedback for library operations, with the district media committee having the final say.
She said that content should be allowed that has won awards and is used in book fairs and other related competitions.
But Ragsdale, who issued a lengthy statement in September defending the decision to remove the books, was adamant that materials deemed to be “vulgar, sexually explicit, lewd, obscene, or pornographic” will continue to be removed.
Before Thursday’s vote on the legislative priorities, he took The Marietta Daily Journal and the head of a local teachers association to task regarding the book issue.
On Oct. 29 the newspaper published a lengthy report about “hundreds of books” being removed from Cobb school district libraries since the school year began in August.
The MDJ obtained the information through an open records request and also published a 62-page school-by-school list of the titles that were no longer on shelves.
In reading from prepared remarks, Ragsdale said that in spite of the headline, the reality was “a bit more bland.”
He said the district purchases around new 100,000 library titles a year and there’s only so much space on the shelves.
Many of the materials, he said, were older items that “were weeded to make room for new items.”
Ragsdale said that the routine replacement of materials was, “unfortunately, not grabby enough” and the media outlet mentioned the removing of books containing themes “that are commonly challenged in school districts around the country.”
But he said that amounted to 14 titles in all, and “this was a wonderful opportunity for those wishing to agitate and wildly and unhelpfully speculate, arguing that it is part of some secret culture war or political attack.”
Ragsdale denied accusations by Jeff Hubbard, head of the Cobb County Association of Educators, that what was happening in Cobb is part of a broader effort nationwide to restrict materials in school libraries, especially in Republican-friendly locals.
“Unfortunately for Jeff, one of the books that was replaced was Webster’s New Book of Facts,” Ragsdale said, tongue-in-cheek.
Ragsdale said that anyone looking at the 62-page list can, “if they try hard enough . . . find something to give offense.”
He said the district will not permit “taxpayer supported unrestricted access” to sexually explicit books “for children.”
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The issue of literacy rates—especially in the wake of educational disruptions stemming from the COVID-19 response—is the subject of an agenda item at a Cobb Board of Education work session Thursday.
The agenda item, entitled “Literacy Updates,” doesn’t detail what will be presented; East Cobb News has left a message with the Cobb County School District seeking more information.
The board also will hear a presentation about the district’s 2024 legislative priorities, which also weren’t specified on the published meeting agenda.
The board is meeting in public at a 1 p.m. work session Thursday and a 7 p.m. business session at the Cobb County School District Central Office (514 Glover St., Marietta).
The agendas for both meetings can be found here; an executive session will take place in between.
While schools in East Cobb had some of the best Milestones test scores in Cobb for the 2022-23 school year, educators across the state and in Cobb County have been emphasizing ways to address learning loss due to COVID-19 disruptions, especially in third-grade reading, a key benchmark of early literacy.
But others struggled, with several elementary schools having percentages of third-graders at proficiency levels at 65 percent or lower.
Across the state, ELA Milestones scores among third-graders in 2023 rose three percentage points and the percentage of third-graders reading at or above grade-level was up slightly, from 64 to 66 percent.
In ELA, 78.9 percent of Cobb students were rated as developing learners or above, and 78.7 percent met the same threshold in all subjects.
Marietta City Schools has embarked on a program called the “Science of Reading” that school district officials there said has yielded higher scores for third-grade readers. It’s a concept that’s been adopted by the Georgia Department of Education and will be implemented statewide into Milestones by 2025.
At the school board’s evening meeting, recognitions will include STEM certifications at Bells Ferry Elementary School and Mountain View Elementary School and for Lassiter High School teacher Jean Linner, who was recently awarded the Georgia Council of Teachers of Mathematics 2023 Gladys M. Thomason Award.
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Kennesaw State University announced this week that its combined undergraduate and graduate enrollment for the fall semester is 45,152 students, and all-time high, an the fifth year in a row that enrollment has gone up.
That makes KSU the third-largest university in the state, behind the University of Georgia and Georgia State University, and reflects 4.4 percent overall enrollment growth since the fall of 2022, according to a release.
The rise in the number of students represents an increase of 4.4% over Fall 2022, which includes a 4.1% increase in undergraduate and a 7% growth in the number of graduate students attending KSU.
More than 8,600 freshmen and freshmen transfer students are part of that new enrollment, a 15.7 percent increase from last year.
The number of first-generation students—those whose parents do not have a college degree—also has gone up by 5 percent and represents 38.3 percent of the KSU student body.
Female students are 50.6 percent of the student body, and 49.4 percent are males. African-American students make up 26 percent, and Hispanic and Latino students comprise 15 percent, according to the KSU release.
In 2018, KSU’s enrollment was 36,000 students, shortly after the institution’s merger with Southern Polytechnic State University. KSU grew to 43,000 by 2021, and kmore than 45,000 in 2023.
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Karson Stevenson (at left, in green sweater), with other Cobb REACH scholarship recipients and their families. Photo: Cobb County School District.
Karson Stevenson, an eighth-grader at Hightower Trail Middle School in East Cobb, is one of five middle school students in the Cobb County School District who was awarded a $10,000 college scholarship this week.
It’s called a REACH Scholarship, after REACH Georgia, a needs-based mentorship and scholarship program, and the Cobb Schools Foundation, a philanthropic arm of the Cobb school district that supports the needs of students.
Under the REACH program, qualified students receive $4,000 in scholarship aid from the Cobb Schools Foundation, and REACH Georgia will match it by 2.5 times for a total scholarship worth $10,000.
Since its inception in 2012, Georgia REACH has provided scholarship assistance to many students who are first-generation college/post-secondary-bound students.
The students will get their scholarships after high school graduation, with criteria including maintaining a 2.5-HOPE -grade-point-average. They also must “continue to have good behavior and school attendance, and to meet with a volunteer mentor and academic coach throughout high school,” according to a Cobb school district release.
Members of the Cobb school district front office, including Superintendent Chris Ragsdale, were in attendance at a scholarship signing ceremony this week.
Karson Stevenson will be attending Pope High School next year.
Kimberly Martin, Karson’s mother, said in the release that “I just know that he always just been a special child. For somebody to come step up here and actually tell him that and just express that he was actually chosen, it just means so much to me. It just makes my mommy heart so full.”
His father, Kevin Stevenson, said his advice for his son is to “keep going. Don’t give up. Life gives you curveballs, ups, downs. You [will] get happy, you [will] get sad, but through it all, you just keep going and give it your best.”
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Bill Rembert Sr., an art teacher at Wheeler High School. has been honored by the Georgia Art Education Association.
He is the 2023 recipient of the association’s Croy West Special Needs Art Educator of the Year Award, according to the Cobb County School District.
That goes to an educator for how they support special needs students.
A former special education teacher, Rembert collaborates with departments throughout the school, including special education, “to ensure all students can share their voices and feel the impact of art in their world,” the district release said.
Those projects include the creation of a sensory art space for special education students.
“Mr. Rembert works to show his school community the importance of art in their day-to-day lives through the installation of murals, display of work throughout the building, and inclusion of a variety of contemporary artists into his lessons. Mr. Rembert has always worked to create a sense of unity and connectedness in his classroom by showing students how all voices are welcome and needed in art spaces,” said Laura LaQuaglia, the district’s supervisor of learning design and visual arts.
He will be formally honored at the GAEA conference in November.
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Cobb Board of Education electoral maps before 2022 reapportionment (left) and after (right).
Attorneys for plaintiffs seeking new electoral maps for the Cobb County Board of Education have filed a motion seeking a preliminary injunction.
The motion, filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Atlanta, seeks to prevent the Cobb Board of Elections from setting up 2024 elections with maps passed by the Georgia legislature in 2022 and asks for a ruling by December.
Four of the seven posts on the Cobb school board will be on the 2024 ballot, including Post 5 in East Cobb.
Attorneys from the Southern Poverty Law Center and other organizations claim those maps violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and want them thrown out and redrawn before 2024 primaries in May.
The plaintiffs have claimed in their lawsuit, filed last year, that the three school board posts in South Cobb presently held by Democrats have been racially gerrymandered to dilute black and Hispanic voting strength.
They include Post 6, which previously included the Walton and Wheeler clusters and which are now in Post 5.
Republicans hold a 4-3 majority on the board, and three GOP-held seats will be up for re-election next year.
In their motion (you can read it here), the plaintiffs allege that the maps passed by the legislature placed a majority of black and Hispanic voters in the three southern posts and “bleaches the population of the northern districts,” in which the white populations of three of them were increased.
The motion says that the white population shift was most crucial in Post 7 in West Cobb, where incumbent Republican member Brad Wheeler narrowly won re-election in 2020 over a black Democrat. (see chart below).
The white population in Post 7 at the time was 47.55 percent. The maps passed last year increased the white population to 58.17 percent. Wheeler’s seat is among those set to expire in 2024.
The two posts in East Cobb have the highest percentage of white populations. While Post 5 didn’t change much (going from 66.97 percent to 67.24 percent), the Post 4 difference also was noticeable, rising from 57.24 percent white to 65.56.
David Chastain, one of the four GOP members of the school board, was re-elected to a third term in Post 4 last year.
The plaintiffs’ motion for an injunction comes as the Cobb elections board agreed to begin settlement talks. Ben Mathis, the lead attorney for the Cobb County School District, which had been released from the case, issued a charged statement last week accusing the elections board of “a total surrender” to what he called “leftist political activists” who wanted to usurp the power of the legislature to redraw the Cobb school board maps.
While Democrats control the Cobb Board of Commissioners and the county’s legislative delegation, Republicans currently control only the Cobb school board.
“After they discovered they could not change the direction of education in our county at the ballot box, they manufactured this unlawful court case,” Mathis said, referencing the plaintiffs.
Last week, the district’s attorneys filed a motion in federal court seeking a preliminary injunction to file an amicus brief and introduce rebuttal experts it says are necessary to respond to plaintiffs’ experts on racial discrimination in electoral maps who otherwise would have no opposition in court.
East Cobb News has left a message with the Cobb school district seeking comment on the motion for a preliminary injunction by the plaintiffs.
The school board majority hired Taylor English Decisions, a lobbying component of Cumberland-area law firm, Taylor English Duma LLP, to redraw the maps in 2021.
The Democratic-led Cobb delegation opted for maps that would keep the boundaries relatively unchanged. Republican State Rep. Ginny Ehrhart of West Cobb—whose husband, former legislator Earl Ehrhart, was CEO of Taylor English Decisions at the time—sponsored maps redrawn by the school board’s law firm.
Those maps were approved in the GOP-dominated legislature, while the Cobb delegation’s maps did not receive a vote. Earl Ehrhart is now managing director of Freeman Mathis Decisions, the lobbying arm of Freeman Mathis & Gary, which the board hired this year to fight the redistricting suit.
The plaintiffs’ motion concludes by asking their motion be granted by Dec. 15 “so that an interim remedial map be adopted by January 22, 2024, well in advance of the 2024 elections to avoid hardship to Cobb County’s election administration and to mitigate voter confusion.”
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The Cobb New Horizons Symphony Band, which is made up of senior adults, will hold a special concert Thursday to honor the memory of Wheeler High School band director Madison Argo.
The concert takes place at 12 p.m. at the school, and will include works from John Williams and John Philip Sousa.
Another featured piece is “The Mandalorian” by Ludwig Göransson and which will be conducted by Debbie Davies, Wheeler’s first female marching band drum major.
A Cobb County School District spokesperson said the concert is not open to the public and had been scheduled before Argo’s death.
Here’s what Dr. Charles Jackson, head of Cobb New Horizons, said:
“We planned this concert several weeks ago but a new required form was created in the Cobb County Schools requiring visiting groups to go through an additional extensive vetting process. During the delay is when the passing of Madison Argo occurred. When I realized that our concert was going to take place after such a sudden and unexpected loss, I thought it would be nice to dedicate the program to celebrating his life. All of the 98 senior adult members of my band were inspired during their youth by a band director like Madison Argo who instilled a love of making music that was so deep and profound, that it inspired these people to continue playing their band instrument over the course of their life. Some members have now been playing for 50, 60, and over 70 years! What a great legacy for a teacher to share with the world. I want his students to know that he dedicated his life to something that will add beauty and enjoyment over the rest of their life and they should never give up on this gift that he helped them to develop.“
Argo, 32, was in his second year as director of the Wheeler band programs when he died on Sept. 28. A cause of death has not been announced; his family has raised more than $18,000 for burial expenses.
He was a native of Alabama and graduated from Auburn University, where he was a drum major. Argo earned a master’s degree in fine arts from Ball State University and performed with the Cobb Wind Symphony, among other local musical organizations in the Atlanta area.
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From JJ McKelvey, Taste of East Cobb event coordinator (and main fundraiser for the Walton Band programs), comes word of a free community show the Walton Raider Marching Band is performing Tuesday.
It starts at 7:30 p.m. at the Raider Valley football stadium (1591 Bill Murdock Road) and it’s the “Alice Underground” show that has won recent multiple awards, including first place at the Buford Marching Band Classic (outstanding music, outstanding visual, and outstanding effect).
Two weeks ago, the Walton band was named Grand Champion, Highest Music Award, Most Entertaining, and several 10 other awards at the Super Bowl of Sound Marching Band Competition at Central High School in Carrollton.
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Cobb parent Nazia Khanzada urged the school board and district to “be more careful with the words they use.”
Several Muslim parents in the Cobb County School District denounced the district for sending out an electronic message last week about an “international threat” from the Hamas terrorist group in the Middle East that they said has led to fear and mistreatment in their own community.
Some addressed a work session of the Cobb Board of Education Thursday and said they and their children were subjected to Islamophobic treatment after the district sent out a message last Friday, as Hamas called for a global day of “anger” as its war with Israel continues.
The district message noted the threat, and said that “while there is no reason to believe this threat has anything to do with our schoools, parents can expect both law enforcement and school staff to take every step to keep your children safe.”
That incensed Nazia Khanzada, mother of a Cobb fifth-grader, who was among those who addressed the board.
“If it had nothing to do with our schools, I ask the question then, why was this message sent out?” she said. “It was not only irresponsible, since it wasn’t substantiated with any kind of specific evidence or threat to Cobb County, but it was also fear-mongering.
“I want the school board to know that this message mentioning Hamas has directly resulted in hate, harassment and bullying threats directed at Cobb’s Arabic and Muslim students and their families, including myself.”
Khanzada said Muslim parents were reluctant to send their children back to school as a result of “the rampant ignorance prevalent with Americans equating Hamas with Muslims, which is insulting and discriminatory.”
Saadia Memon, a Cobb resident, attorney and board member of the Georgia Chapter of the Council on Islamic-American Relations, said the reference to Hamas targets students for bullying and noted a six-year-old Palestinian Muslim boy in Chicago who was stabbed repeatedly to death by his family’s landlord.
“Schools should not be part of stoking these fears,” Memon said. “When schools exaggerate threats by Hamas or any other terrorist organization relating to the Middle East, they are participating in an environment of creating anti-Muslim sentiment, which puts Muslim and immigrant children in nature.
Parent Sana Salim said her son has been called a terrorist in the past. She said he asked her last Friday “is Hamas a new word for terrorist?”
She said she’s pleased with her son’s educators, but is “so disappointed” in the district “for making this statement and adding to Islamophobia.”
School board members did not respond to any of the commenters during the work session.
But at Thursday night’s voting meeting, Superintendent Chris Ragdale offered a brief reply to the comments.
He defended sending out the alert and said that Cobb was among many school districts “taking special steps to ensure the safety of students and staff” last Friday.
“The information we received required us to let the entire district and parents know we were taking the threats seriously.
“However, let me be very clear,” Ragsdale continued. “Bullying and hate of any type will not be tolerated in the Cobb County School District.”
He said that Hamas’ actions “should always be condemned” and issued “thoughts and prayers” to those who’ve been subjected to the violence, and especially to those families of American and Israeli hostages “who are being held by terrorists.”
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“We don’t need a committee to do the superintendent’s job,” school board member David Chastain said.
By a 5-2 vote, the Cobb Board of Education on Thursday rejected a proposal by one of its members to change school district policy on books and materials in school libraries.
That was in the wake of the district’s firing of a West Cobb elementary school teacher for reading a book to her class deemed to be in violation of the state’s divisive concepts in education law.
During a work session Thursday afternoon, Democrat Becky Sayler of Post 2 in South Cobb said she wanted to revise a policy last updated in 2012 that governs the evaluation of library books.
Her proposal would have created local media committees to provide feedback for library operations, with the district media committee having the final say.
She said content should be allowed that has won awards and is used in book fairs and other related competitions. Also to be permitted are materials related to major world religions, including the Bible, Torah and Koran.
If a book is recommended to be removed by a media committee, it could not be reconsidered (the agenda item did not include a copy of Sayler’s proposal; we will update it here when we get it).
Sayler said the changes are needed “to ensure that we take intellectual freedom seriously” and because “we don’t want to harm our students by denying their access to quality materials.”
One of the books removed from Cobb schools is “Flamer,” which won a Lambda Literary Award in 2021 in the young adult division. The district said that book was removed because it contains passages about sex acts and masturbation.
Sayler said existing policy, especially given what’s happened in Cobb schools recently, will continue to have a “chill effect” and “diversity in viewpoints would become limited.”
She wanted to have a discussion and a vote next month, but Republican member David Chastain of Post 4 in East Cobb quickly made a motion to reject her proposal.
He said he didn’t want unelected people making those decisions, and said the proposal amounted to “micromanaging the superintendent.”
When Sayler reminded him that Ragsdale is unelected, Chastain replied that “we don’t need a committee to do the superintendent’s job.”
Ragsdale reiterated parts of his lengthy remarks at the September board meeting defending his decision to remove the books, saying that “I have a duty to keep students safe.”
He said that materials deemed to be “vulgar, sexually explicit, lewd, obscene, or pornographic” will continue to be removed.
“If it is deemed to be inappropriate, as these three [books that were removed] are, it has no place in our schools at all.”
Democrat Nichelle Davis of Post 6 in Smyrna asked Ragsdale about the current process for reviewing books and he explained that there is a team of administrators that does the evaluation, with discussion in his executive cabinet.
He said he doesn’t make a decision without that but “the buck stops with me. It’s my decision.”
Davis later said she thought it was important for community stakeholders to have consistency and transparency in being informed about the process.
“It’s impossible to make everybody happy,” she said. “This will not be the last time that we will look at a policy update.”
Ragsdale mentioned that one of the books that was removed—“Me, Earl and the Dying Girl”—contained a depiction of oral sex.
“There is no middle ground,” he said, adding that Sayler’s proposal would not allow for the current review process to continue.
He said he would abide by whatever policy change the board would adopt, but not until then.
Sayler, who is in her first year on the board, said she’s not in favor of pornography, and said the board engaged in micromanagement when it banned the teaching of critical race theory in 2021.
Hutchins wanted to amend the motion to add that the final decision on removing a book should be up to the superintendent or a designee, but Ragsdale said that’s already in state law.
The amendment was withdrawn, and Hutchins voted with the board’s four Republican members against the proposal, with Sayler and Davis voting in favor.
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The Cobb County School District issued a strongly-worded public statement Tuesday accusing the the Cobb Board of Elections of colluding with plaintiffs who are seeking new electoral maps for the Cobb Board of Education.
The elections board voted last week along partisan lines to begin settling with parties who filed a suit contending that the school board maps passed by the Georgia legislature in 2022 violated federal voting rights laws and diluted minority voting power.
The plaintiffs, who are represented by attorneys from the Southern Poverty Law Center, a liberal advocacy group, are attempting to have either the Georgia legislature or a court redraw the maps.
In messages posted to the Cobb school district website (you can read them here and here) and released to the media, Ben Mathis, an attorney for the district, said the district wants to rejoin the lawsuit after a “hasty settlement” with the Cobb elections board “which they worked out in secrecy with their politically allied plaintiffs, [and that] is designed to avoid any legal effort to defend the current map.
“This is not a settlement but a total surrender by the Elections Board,” Mathis said. “This agreement is a complete usurpation of the legislative process.”
The seven-member Cobb school board has a 4-3 Republican majority. The seats of three of those Republicans, including David Banks of Post 5 in East Cobb, will be the 2024 ballot.
Democrats control the Cobb Board of Commissioners and the Cobb legislative delegation, and in his statement, Mathis accused the SPLC of trying “to impose their will over the Legislature, the Governor, and the voters of Cobb County.
“After they discovered they could not change the direction of education in our county at the ballot box, they manufactured this unlawful court case,” Mathis continued.
Cobb elections board chairwoman Tori Silas
“To justify what they have done, the Elections Board says it is cheaper to give up than to defend the map against the array of liberal activist groups affiliated with Stacy Abrams and the Democratic Party.”
The Cobb elections board has four Democrats and one Republican, and voted 4-1, with GOP member Debbie Fisher opposed, to begin settlement discussions.
The vote came after a lengthy executive session and there was no discussion by elections board members in open session.
Daniel White, the attorney for the Cobb Elections Board, refuted the collusion claim, and a Cobb government spokesman issued a statement Tuesday from Tori Silas, the board chairwoman, saying her body is “not the proper party to defend the challenged redistricting maps.
“As the only remaining defendant in the case after the School District was given the dismissal it sought, we were left to make the decision that best served the citizens of Cobb County, which is what we did. The settlement allowed our Board to maintain its position of neutrality in this political dispute and was the fiscally responsible thing to do.”
In September federal judge Eleanor Ross issued an oral order precluding the Cobb school district from continuing as an intervenor in the lawsuit.
In a motion filed Tuesday, the district asked for a preliminary injunction to file an amicus brief and introduce rebuttal experts it says are necessary to respond to plaintiffs’ experts on racial discrimination in electoral maps who otherwise would have no opposition in court.
“Plaintiffs must be held to their strict burden of proof, especially when asking the Court to invade the state legislative process,” the Cobb school district lawyers said in their motion Tuesday.
East Cobb News contacted the SPLC, asking why it sued the Cobb Elections Board over a map drawn by the legislature. This is all that we received from its communications department:
“Voting rights are nonpartisan and rooted in the belief that equal opportunities to vote must be available to all people, regardless of their political affiliations, racial, cultural, or religious background. It is fundamental that every voice is heard and that elections are conducted fairly, and that is what Plaintiffs have consistently sought in this case. Plaintiffs look forward to proving their claims to the Court, as the terms of the settlement require before any changes are made to the map.”
The maps were originally drawn by Mathis’ firm, Freeman Mathis and Gary of Cumberland, and were approved by the school board’s Republican majority.
Among the changes in the map was moving Post 6 (formerly the Walton and Wheeler clusters) entirely into the Cumberland-Vinings-Smyrna area, and leaving East Cobb with only two school board seats, Post 4 and Post 5.
The Democratic-led Cobb legislative delegation proposed maps that wouldn’t have shifted the lines as dramatically, but they were never voted on by the Republican-dominated legislature.
The SPLC and other legal groups, including the ACLU of Georgia, filed its lawsuit, Finn v. Cobb County Board of Elections and Registration, last summer.
The plaintiffs include parents and liberal activists and organizations, including the League of Women Voters of Marietta-Cobb.
The lawsuit seeks substantial redrawing of posts 2,3 and 6 in South Cobb, all of which are currently held by Democrats.
White said in response to the Cobb school district’s claims that “the Cobb County School District made a massive blunder in its litigation strategy that cost it the ability to defend the redistricting maps it created. Rather than owning up to its mistake, counsel for the School District has chosen to deflect attention by making outlandish accusations about the Cobb County Board of Elections that it knows to be false.”
White, whose comments were initially published Friday by The Marietta Daily Journal, said the Cobb Elections Board from the outset had sought to dismiss the suit “on jurisdictional grounds” and that his clients could have been held liable if the plaintiffs proved that the Cobb school board “adopted racially gerrymandered maps.
“The Board of Elections agrees that the District should have been allowed to continue its defense of its maps, and moved the Court to let them back in the case. Now that the Court has made it clear the District will not be given that opportunity, the Board of Elections made the decision it felt was in the best interest of the citizens of Cobb County.”
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Cobb Superintendent Chris Ragsdale cuts the ribbon at Eastvalley ES, joined by members of the school board and Eastvalley staff. ECN photos.
Several hundred people braved cool, windy weather around lunchtime Monday for a moment many in the Eastvalley Elementary School community have been anticipating for years:
The official christening of a new campus that not only replaces the obsolete 63-year-old facility on Lower Roswell Road, but raises a new bar for an elementary school.
The nearly 150,000-square-foot building across from Wheeler High School on Holt Road has two stories and more than double the number of classrooms—28 to 63.
“And all under one roof,” noted Eastvalley principal Dr. Whitney Spooner, as the crowd cheered, recalling the many aging portable classrooms that have handled massive overcrowding at Eastvalley for several years.
The gym is four times larger, with six basketball goals, the learning commons includes “a top of the line recording studio” as well as a courtyard with two playscapes and is encircled by a pedestrian track.
Spooner’s teachers applauded wildly when she noted that staff restrooms have gone from three in the old building to 14.
At a cost of nearly $37 million, Eastvalley opened to students and staff two weeks ago after the fall break, after supply chain and construction delays pushed the move from the start of the current school year.
Cobb County School District Superintendent Chris Ragsdale said the delayed opening is “bittersweet—but now it is more sweet than bitter” as the doors have formally opened.
Monday was chosen for the celebration because it was an asynrchronous learning day in the district for staff development reasons.
The Eastvalley Chorus sang the national anthem and many Eastvalley students and their families turned out to tour the new building.
“This is what SPLOST is allowing us to do,” Ragsdale said, referring to the Cobb Education special-purpose local-option sales tax that funds school construction and maintenance projects.
“Y’all deserve the best and this is truly the best.”
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That’s due to a $1,000 bonus for teachers and non-temporary workers that was pledged in December by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and funded through state coffers.
“I want the school board to know that this message mentioning Hamas has directly resulted in hate, harassment and bullying threats directed at Cobb’s Arabic and Muslim students and their families, including myself.”
