The first Cobb Board of Education meeting of 2022 went just like quite a few of their public gatherings last year, and included votes and arguments along predictable partisan lines.
The chairman and vice chairman for the new calendar year both come from posts in East Cobb.
David Chastain, of Post 4 (Kell and Sprayberry clusters) will be the chairman, and David Banks, of Post 5 (Pope and Lassiter clusters) will serve as vice chairman.
They’re part of the four-member Republican majority, and were elected in 4-3 party line votes.
Each year the board holds a special meeting in January to elect new officers, with the proviso that the chair cannot serve two consecutive years.
That policy doesn’t apply to the vice chair, and it was the nomination of Banks to that position for the third consecutive year that sparked charged rhetoric during the brief meeting.
Banks, who is serving his fourth term, came under fire in 2021 for sending an e-mail on his official school board account discouraging recipients from getting the COVID-19 vaccines. and publicly said he doesn’t wear masks because he thinks they don’t work.
Democratic member Jaha Howard, who nominated fellow Democrat Tre’ Hutchins for both leadership posts, said Banks’ statement on masks is “contrary to our policy.”
He also said Banks has some “concerning behavioral issues that have been discussed behind the scenes and for some reason he’s continuing to be nominated.
“He’s also done several things that have been an embarrassment to this county. I’m very concerned that he would be nominated at all, let alone having potentially four votes.”
Howard, who represents Post 2 in Smyrna, attended some of the same public schools in southwest Atlanta as Banks, whom he referred to as his “classmate, whom I do love as child of God. But I do have very significant concerns about his leadership.”
Outgoing board chairman Randy Scamihorn said Howard’s comments were inappropriate, and ordered his microphone to be cut.
“Do you feel powerful doing that?” retorted Howard.
Howard laid out a laundry list of issues he’s referenced during his time on the board for supporting Hutchins, saying that Tre’ “encourages leaders to look beneath the shiny surface of our academic and discipline data in order to get even better as a district . . . believes that our schools should not be named after confederate generals . . . believes it’s bad to sympathize with the January 6th insurrection” among other things.
Howard also said Hutchins “would not take weeks to return phone calls from other board members . . . demonstrates a love for the entire county . . . believes in listening to experts when making decisions, especially during a pandemic.”
Banks, who did not respond to Howard’s remarks, was elected 4-3.
In an October 2020 candidate profile with East Cobb News, he said that he thinks the biggest long-term issue facing the Cobb school district is “white flight” and accused Howard and Charisse Davis, a Democrat who represents Post 6 (Walton and Wheeler clusters) of “trying to make race an issue where it has never been before.”
Davis said she couldn’t support Chastain, who is in his third term, because “I do not feel he is the leader we need now.”
He was chairman in 2019, the first year on the school board for Davis and Howard, and proposed a policy change to ban board member comments during public meetings. The newcomers alleged the measure was aimed at censoring them, but Chastain said it was needed to prevent board members from having to judge the appropriateness of colleagues’ remarks.
“This chair does not want to be the scorekeeper,” he said at the time.
After Chastain was elected on Thursday, Scamihorn didn’t turn over the gavel, as school board attorney Suzanne Wilcox had suggested.
Instead, Scamihorn presided as Cobb superintendent Chris Ragsdale provided an update to COVID-19 protocols and did not permit board discussion.
The school board on Thursday also approved the 2022 meeting schedule by a 5-2 vote, with Davis and Howard opposed.
Chastain, who is up for re-election this year along with Davis and Howard, will preside starting with the first public school board meetings on Jan. 20.
Related posts:
- Cobb schools revise COVID-19 protocols after new state order
- Cobb schools report 2.4K students enrolled online for spring
- Cobb schools to begin spring semester in-person
- PHOTOS: Former East Cobb Middle School campus demolished
- East Cobb would lose school board seat in recommended map
- Proposed Cobb school board map aimed at keeping GOP majority
- East Cobb MS earns STEAM certification from Cobb school district
- Cobb schools accrediting agency puts district on improvement plan
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