The Cobb Board of Education on Thursday will get an annual demographic update to be presented during its August work session.
The work session takes place starting at 3 p.m., and will be followed by an executive session and a voting session at 7 p.m.
All meetings take place in the board room of the Cobb County School District Central Office, at 514 Glover St. in Marietta. The combined agenda for the public meetings can be found at this link.
The public meetings will be streamed live and you can watch on Comcast Cable or on a livestream on the district’s Boxcast Channel.
The Cobb County School District contracts with Education Planners, a private Marietta company run by a former Cobb school superintendent, and that provides demographic updates on an annual basis.
Education Planners takes data from the Atlanta Regional Commission, Cobb building permits, live birth numbers and other sources to project long-term enrollment to help Cobb school district officials plan for school construction needs.
Last May, Education Planners founder James Wilson provided a demographic update that projected selected growth “in pockets” of the county.
Those include most school attendance zones in South Cobb, in Smyrna-Cumberland-Vinings and the Town Center-KSU area as well around Wheeler High in East Cobb, where apartments abound and many schools are well over capacity.
A figure in that presentation showing that more apartment units have been approved in Cobb County since 2006 than any other jurisdiction in metro Atlanta prompted a lengthy, sharp response from Cobb superintendent Chris Ragsdale, who called the numbers “more than disturbing . . . that is alarming.”
He said that an increase in this trend will “continue to have a detrimental impact on schools’ performance, whether they’re perceived or real.”
Ragsdale went on for a good while about high-density zoning and mentioned how such growth has led to split sessions. Cobb Commission Chairwoman Lisa Cupid invited the district to a “stakeholders” meeting during the week of high school graduations.
Last week, the Atlanta Regional Commission said that the area added more than 53,000 new residents in the last year, with only 3,600 coming to Cobb County.
At the Thursday night board meeting, a number of recognitions will involve students at schools in East Cobb.
They include the state championship baseball team from Kell, the girls state track and field champions from Pope and the girls state tennis champions from Walton, as well as individual athletes winning state championships in the spring.
Related:
- East Cobb students named to Cobb Youth Leadership class
- Campaign to ‘flip’ Cobb school board control intensifies
- 3 East Cobb school PTAs get School of Excellence recognition
- 2026 Milestones test results: East Cobb middle, high schools
- 2026 Milestones test results: East Cobb elementary schools
- East Cobb schools earn top marks in Georgia Niche rankings
- Together With Families holds NE Cobb back-to-school bash
- Mediation stalls between Cobb, schools over tax collections
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