A longtime PTA leader in the Lassiter High School community is the latest candidate for the Post 5 seat on the Cobb Board of Education.
Tammy Andress, currently a Lassiter PTSA co-president, said last week she is running as a Democrat for the seat held by three-term Republican David Banks.
Andress is a marketing specialist at the Sandy Plains Road Zaxby’s, and is the mother of three daughters—one is a 2018 Lassiter graduate, and the other two currently are Lassiter students.
She has held PTA leadership roles at Davis Elementary School and Mabry Middle School—her daughters’ previous schools—as well as Lassiter. Andress also is a current vice president of the East Cobb County Council of PTAs.
She said she’s running for the school board to improve transparency with the public, boost teacher planning time and to ensure fiscal responsibility.
Andress also supports the building of a college and career academy in the East Cobb area, similar to what’s under construction now at Osborne High School (read her platform).
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Other initiatives include creating “student stakeholders” to address issues like bullying. She also wants the Cobb County School District to create the position of Chief Resource Officer to better scrutinize budget allotments and contracts to root out waste and discover inequities.
Andress wants to restore public comments by school board members at meetings, a practice that was banned last fall in a contentious dispute that fell along party lines.
Andress is the second Democrat to announce for Post 5, joining first-time candidate Julia Hurtado, a phyiscal therapist who lives in the Sedalia Park attendance zone.
The primary is May 19, and the Post 5 seat thus far has drawn the most interest of the four Cobb school board races up for election this year.
Banks is seeking a fourth term representing Post 5—which includes the Lassiter and Pope clusters—and has drawn three GOP primary challengers. They include Delta pilot Shelley O’Malley, attorney Rob Madayag and IT consultant Matt Harper.
A forum for the Post 5 candidates is being held March 15 and sponsored by the Pope PTSA. It will start at 3 p.m. at the Pope performing arts theater.
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