Cobb school board Critical Race Theory ban Archives

Cobb school board Critical Race Theory ban

The four Republican members of the Cobb Board of Education voted Thursday to ban the teaching of Critical Race Theory in the Cobb County School District.

The three Democrats on the board—all of them African-American—abstained from the vote, accusing the all-white GOP majority of placing political interests ahead of educational concerns.

“I abstain from this nonsense,” said board member Jaha Howard, one of the Democrats.

The vote followed an explosive 45-minute discussion that included heated interruptions between Republican chairman Randy Scamihorn and Democrat Tre Hutchins.

(You can watch the work session here; the CRT resolution discussion begins at the 2:20:20 mark.)

Scamihorn presented a resolution during a board work session Thursday afternoon that prohibited the teaching of Critical Race Theory “by that name and any other name” as well as instruction in Cobb schools of the 1619 Project, which The New York Times published in 2019 as a historical critique of slavery in America.

Hutchins, the newest board member who represents Post 3 in South Cobb, protested that expansive language, saying that Critical Race Theory has never been taught in Cobb schools and “is not a real thing” in district schools.

He also worried that some current aspects of the Cobb curriculum, including “No Place for Hate” and Social Emotional Learning, could fall under the CRT umbrella.

Scamihorn countered that Critical Race Theory—which developed in academia and legal circles in the 1970s to argue that racism is America is systemic and structural—has been all over the news in recent weeks, and that bodies like the Georgia Board of Education and the Cherokee school board have voted to restrict it.

“Now we can throw anything at it because we saw it on TV,” Hutchins said. “That’s dangerous. This feels like we’re furthering an indictment against the great teachers we have.”

That set off an extended, testy exchange, with the two board members raising their voices to interrupt one another for several minutes.

Scamihorn said that CRT is being taught in Cobb schools because he’s seen district teachers mention that they have on social media. At one point, he told Hutchins that “you have besmirched our teachers.”

Hutchins responded that “this is the worst thing that we could ever do,” and their harsh words escalated from there, as he and Scamihorn argued over the details of their discussions about the resolution over the last week.

Other school boards and mostly Republican governors and GOP-led legislatures in a number of states have taken aim at CRT and The 1619 Project, which The New York Times adapted into school curriculum that has been introduced in some school districts.

The lead essay by Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones—who won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary—argues that the American Revolution was fought to preserve slavery.

Prominent historians took issue with that claim, and when Hutchins asked Scamihorn to explain the newspaper’s project further, the latter said it’s “a revisionist history and history should be thorough.”

As for being asked to define CRT, Scamihorn referred to comments from parents heard at the May Cobb school board meeting about having “Marxist” roots and that “it pits one group against another.”

Hutchins said those were interpretations only, and that CRT “can be interpreted in a number of ways. It has nothing to do with education in the first place.”

The CRT resolution is the latest wedge issue along racial and cultural lines that has deeply divided the Cobb school board over the last two years.

The board could not agree to a consensus on an anti-racism resolution last year, and the four school board Republicans also voted to abolish a newly-approved committee in November to examine naming policies for Cobb school district schools and buildings.

Charisse Davis, a Democratic board member who represents the Walton and Wheeler clusters, said that “it’s become that politics are okay apparent in our district as long as they align with some people’s politics.”

She said CRT “has become a conservative talking point for some people who have no idea what it is, and they certainly haven’t been worried about for the last 40-plus years it’s been around.”

She told of minority parents who’ve complained about receiving threats, racist assignments, bigoted comments and “feeling as if the district does not care that they are part of the One Team.”

Davis noted that Cobb schools became fully integrated in 1970 and that previous school boards actively fought it.

“Anyone that cannot understand the impact that that would have should not be in the business of educating,” she said.

Referring to language in the resolution (which has not been made publicly available), Davis said that “to say that this board encourages a diversity of viewpoints is laughable.”

Republican board member David Chastain, who represents the Kell and Sprayberry clusters, said CRT is a cultural concept that has been debated “at the highest levels of academia.”

He said that he supports a resolution banning CRT because of the confusion over it.

“I try to think about what’s best for our children,” and said he’s concern about the effect of how something like CRT might be taught on students in the younger grades.

“Our kids typically aren’t developing abstract thinking skills until middle or high school anyway,” he said. “This is an adult issue, I don’t think it’s a kids’ issue.”

Some parents spoke on the subject during a public comment period at the start of the work session.

Anja Siedzierski, who was born in Poland and is a mother of two daughters in Cobb schools, said during her childhood in a Marxist country she was taught to “hate America” in government schools, and said CRT “is a dangerous ideology.

She asked “can we go back to teaching kids love and respect?” regardless of background. “Critical Theory is not the way to do that.”

Jennifer Susko, a counselor at Mableton Elementary School who thinks the district hasn’t done enough to address racism, said the resolution is a “maddening choice” and “a lie about history.”

“We’ll watch all white people tell black people that racism is not that big deal,” she said, referring to the board Republicans.