After turning heads—and occasionally clashing with his colleagues and school district leaders—during his single term on the Cobb Board of Education, Jaha Howard is sounding a more low-key tone as he campaigns for an open seat on the Cobb Board of Commissioners.
Howard finished first in a five-way Democratic primary with 33 percent of the vote on May 21, and will be facing first-time candidate Taniesha Whorton (previous story here) in Tuesday’s runoff election.
(Here’s Howard’s campaign website.)
Both live in the Smyrna area of District 2, whose boundaries are being disputed in the courts following a reapportionment battle that drew incumbent Jerica Richardson out of her seat.
And both are actively seeking votes in East Cobb in the early hot summer amid low turnout.
Howard sees it as an opportunity to do some serious ground-level retail campaigning.
“There’s a lot of direct connection with voters who tend to vote,” he said in an interview with East Cobb News earlier this week. “We’re having the most success calling voters in East Cobb.”
He said the personal conversations have been fruitful, and his campaign has been targeting seniors with direct mail.
“People in East Cobb were paying a lot of attention over the last few years,” Howard said, referring to his school board tenure, which lasted from 2019-2022.
“They appreciated that we were asking questions that they wanted answers to.”
Howard—whose school board campaign for Post 2 in the Smyrna area was managed by Richardson—was a central figure in a number of controversies, including demands for greater equity and diversity initiatives in the Cobb County School District, the district’s COVID response and racial disparities.
In 2021, Howard and the board’s two other Democrats, include Charisse Davis—who represented the Walton and Wheeler clusters—requested a special review from the district’s accrediting agency (which ultimately reversed its findings).
That set off several more months of open sparring during 2022, during which Howard gave up his seat and ran unsuccessfully for Georgia School Superintendent.
In reflecting on his school board tenure, Howard said that the political change that’s come to Cobb in recent years has been difficult for some.
(Republican dominance in local government since the late 1980s is now down to a single seat on the school board.)
“For people who did not want to hear honest conversations, it was divisive,” Howard said. “It depends on how you see it.”
He said that on the other hand, he’s been told that he and his Democratic school board upstarts “were a breath of fresh air. People still say that they appreciate me. Conflict is connected to real solutions.”
Howard said his campaign priorities for commissioner are public safety and economic development.
“The people who take care of us,” he said in reference to first responders, “need to be taken care of” in terms of salaries, housing and health services and related resources.
As for local small business growth, Howard—whose pediatric dentistry practice in Vinings has grown from 3 to 20 employees—said “we need to make sure entrepreneurs have what they need.”
He didn’t outline specifics for those areas, or for other hot-button issues that have galvanized citizens recently.
After leaving the school board, Howard was appointed to the Cobb Transit Advisory Board by Chairwoman Lisa Cupid.
Howard said he supports expanding transit, but was initially concerned about the 30-year length of the transit tax referendum that’s being put on the November ballot. But that length was necessary to qualify for federal funding.
“I’m a big fan of investing in our infrastructure,” he said. “What we need to have are better and clearer communications about our vision—what the projects are, and how it benefits us.”
Howard said other issues he’s stressing as he campaigns are the effects of inflation as they pertain to county employees.
“We have to be able to keep up with that,” he said, referencing the county’s challenge of hiring and retaining personnel.
“That’s going to come at a cost.”
But as citizens continue to grapple with rising property tax assessments—those bills just went out a few weeks ago—Howard acknowledged that it’s “one of the first things that comes up. It’s a shock, how rapidly” assessments have gone up over the last 2-3 years.
When asked if he favors rolling back the millage rate to offset those increases, Howard said that “we have to put all options on the table” with the objective “to put the least burden on homeowners.”
Commissioners delayed voting on a proposed stormwater tax until August after community opposition. Howard said he understands the pain taxpayers are feeling on a number of fronts, but “we’ve kicked the can down the road” for far too long to address a stormwater system that needs to be upgraded.
“At some p0int, we’re going to have to deal with it,” he said. “There’s no easy way out of a shared responsibility.”
While the partisan squabbles on the commission have taken on a different dynamic than the school board, Howard believes there’s nothing wrong with a healthy difference of opinion.
“Some people might see doom and gloom” when observing those open disputes, he said, but it’s good to “hear them out loud in a constructive way.”
But he asserts the priority should be for the board to determine “what’s right and what’s best for our county.”
Howard admitted that regardless of the issues, including housing affordability and zoning and development, that “people still want Cobb to thrive.”
Related:
- District 2 Cobb commission Democratic runoff decided Tuesday
- Cobb commission candidate qualifies for runoff in surprise
- Fundraiser set for Republican Cobb school board candidates
- Primary results: DA defeated; Commission race heads to runoff
- Cobb redistricting lawsuit dismissed by Ga. Supreme Court
- Cobb commission candidates campaigning amid map confusion
- Cobb school board Post 5 candidates receive endorsements
- MORE: Visit the East Cobb News Politics & Elections Page
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A special needs student who was left out of the main portion of Sprayberry High School’s graduation ceremony last month pleaded with Cobb Board of Education members Thursday to make sure something like that doesn’t happen to anyone else.
Ashlynn Rich, an honor student and varsity athlete at Sprayberry, spoke during a public comment period Thursday night at school board meeting.
Shortly after her remarks and those of her mother, Linda Ramirez, who had filed a civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Education, Cobb County School District Superintendent Chris Ragsdale issued a formal apology.
Rich, who has Down Syndrome, was given her diploma with several other special-needs students before Sprayberry’s ceremony began. During the formal commencement, however, they waited in a hallway and were escorted out of the Kennesaw State University Convocation Center before the event had concluded.
“Graduation is a special moment and I wanted to share it with my friends, just like everyone else,” she said. “I don’t want any other student to go through what I did.”
Ragsdale said that Rich’s exclusion from Sprayberry’s commencement was “not a policy issue but a personnel issue” and he could not elaborate more. He said that “it appears to be a decision made by an individual employee, perhaps with the best intentions, that should have been made by a parent.
“On behalf of the district, I apologize to Ashlynn and her family,” Ragsdale said, as the audience broke out into applause. “What happened should not have happened.”
The Cobb school district gives parents of special-needs students options for how they want their children to participate in graduation ceremonies. Ramirez was told that Ashlynn could graduate with a small group of peers at the school, with her full class at KSU or both.
Ramirez has said she wanted her daughter to take full part in graduation at KSU, but learned about different plans right before the ceremony.
“Her exclusion was not just an oversight,” Ramirez said at Thursday’s meeting. “It was a significant and painful moment of discrimination.
“My daughter was made to feel different, separated from her peers, in a moment that she had earned. The act of segregation not only hurt Ashlynn but also sent troubling messages about how we value our students with disabilities.”
Ragsdale did say new measures were being put into place to ensure that the parents of special-needs students have input into their child’s graduation. That process will include a written agreement between school staff and parents before the ceremony.
In the aftermath of Sprayberry’s graduation, the Cobb school district initially responded to outcries on social media, saying that’s “the worst place to find accurate information about students and schools.”
But a few days later, the district acknowledged what had happened with Rich, and said that it didn’t meet the district’s standards for graduation.
During his remarks Thursday, Ragsdale said that his staff began investigating the incident following concerns from board members and the administration.
He said the new consultation process will be “ensuring there are no misunderstandings, and no employee is making a decision without the clear input of a parent or guardian of a student with an exceptionality.”
At the meeting Thursday, Ragsdale and board chairman Randy Scamihorn met with Rich and Ramirez and other supporters, who wore red in support of Rich’s favorite color.
Rich, who also operates a homemade baked goods business, intends to go to college and study culinary arts.
