For the first time since February, the Cobb Board of Education is meeting in person on Thursday.
The board has been meeting in virtual sessions via Zoom since March, shortly after the Cobb County School District closed in the wake of COVID-19, and has had an altered meeting schedule.
The board had been holding a work session in the morning, immediately followed by an executive session and its monthly business meeting after that in the virtual setting.
Thursday’s schedule will revert back to staggered times, starting with a work session at 1 p.m., followed by an executive session. The business meeting will start at 7 p.m., which had been its usual starting time in-person.
The meetings take place in the board room of the CCSD’s central office at 514 Glover St. in Marietta. The full agenda packet for both meetings can be found here.
The work session and regular meetings will be live-streamed on the district’s CobbEdTV stream, via BoxCast, Channel 24 on Comcast Cable and Channel 182 on Charter Cable.
Also restored for the in-person meeting are public comments, which were discontinued for five months, then put on tape-delay. The public comments were not recorded for August due to what the district said was an error.
Public comments for the September meeting were taken before the work session but were not shown live on the district’s webstream.
They were eventually added to the end of the meeting stream. The district explained that comments weren’t being shown live to ensure speakers were verified as Cobb residents, or school district staff, students or parents.
A spokesman for the Georgia First Amendment Foundation objected to the the board’s public comments policy, and urged the Georgia Attorney General’s office to look into the matter.
Here’s what the district has posted on its board meeting page for those wishing to comment:
“Individuals desiring to appear before the Board MUST sign-in and present a valid ID proving residency or property ownership in Cobb County. The sign-in session begins 40 minutes prior to the posted board meeting start time and closes exactly 10 minutes before the meeting starts with NO exceptions.”
School board member Charisse Davis, who represents the Walton and Wheeler clusters, has a matter on the work session agenda regarding the public comment process.
She told East Cobb News that “when we were still virtual, I thought the way we were handling public comment could use some improvement.”
Davis said she suggested convening the virtual meeting and going directly to public comment, “especially if the district was adamant about recording the public comment to be added to the website later.
“Now that we are resuming in-person meetings, I expect public comment to look very much like it did before, with the exception of an audience.”
There will be public comments at the start of the work session and the regular meeting on Thursday. A district spokesman said there will be different procedures for those wishing to comment due to social-distancing restrictions.
All attendees will be required to wear masks when distancing isn’t possible, and the spokesman said that “members of the public will be allowed into the building one at a time for public comment.”
The work session agenda will include a financial report for the 2019-20 year that ended on June 30.
Davis also wants to incorporate the mask requirements for students returning classrooms into the district’s dress code policy. Last month by a 4-3 vote the board declined to take up the matter.
Another item being presented by Davis pertains to parliamentary procedure, but she declined to elaborate.
“I will have much more to say at the meeting, but there was a complete breakdown in our last meeting of how we conduct ourselves as a governing body,” she said.
Related Content
- Nine Cobb elementary schools report confirmed COVID cases
- More than 63 percent of East Cobb ES students returning
- School-by-school lists of face-to-face, remote choices
- Cobb schools issue mask guidance; 49% of students returning
- East Cobb schools lead county in 2020 SAT scores
- Cobb schools release more K-5, special ed reopening details
- Cobb school board members want masks in dress code policy
Get Our Free E-Mail Newsletter!
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
