At the end of the Cobb Board of Education meeting Thursday, superintendent Chris Ragsdale said the Cobb County School District will be opening two Pre-K centers over the next two years.
The first will open in August on the grounds of the current Harmony Leland Elementary School, which is moving to a new campus in Mableton.
The second Pre-K center will be located at the now-closed Brown Elementary School in Smyrna in August 2021.
“I am so excited that we will be able to support early learning for even more Cobb students,” Ragsdale said. “Research shows that students who enroll in high-quality early education programs are more likely to read on grade level by third grade and are better equipped for future success.”
The first Pre-K center will serve 250-300 students with four general education classrooms and 10 special education classrooms that are currently at neighborhood schools.
The Pre-K center is being built in partnership with DECAL (the Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning), the Atlanta Speech School, WellStar, and Learn4Life.
The Cobb Pre-K centers must be approved by DECAL.
Cobb school board member Charisse Davis, who represents the Walton and Wheeler clusters and is an advocate for Pre-K expansion, said after the announcement that “I appreciate district leadership for entertaining my thoughts on the issue and bringing more early learning options to the Cobb County community.”
Also on Thursday, the school board approved a bid from Morgan Stanley to borrow $100 million in short-term loans to continue construction projects in the Cobb Ed-V SPLOST program.
The loans will be repaid at the end of the year with an interest rate of 0.9 percent, according to Cobb finance director Brad Johnson.
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