For the third month in a row the Cobb Board of Education will be meeting virtually on Thursday, holding its work session and regular voting meeting online.
In between is an executive session that won’t be available to the public. The meetings begin with the work session at 10 a.m.
Unlike previous meetings that were conducted in person at the Cobb County School District offices, there isn’t a set time for the business meeting to begin. It will start immediately following the executive session, so viewers will have to stay tuned.
The public meetings can be seen on the district’s website or its YouTube page.
An agenda for the meetings can be seen here.
Also unlike in-person meetings, there is not a public comment period that’s typical at the start of school board meetings.
The Cobb Board of Commissioners has switched to online meetings and retaining its practice of allowing public comment. Callers phone in a half-hour before the meetings starts, and there have been some technical issues.
The Cobb school board began meeting online shortly after CCSD schools were closed in mid-March due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Also appearing on the call are district officials, including Superintendent Chris Ragsdale, and school board attorney Clem Doyle.
At Thursday’s work session, the board will hear a presentation by the Development Authority of Cobb County and Home Depot, which is seeking a tax abatement.
School board member David Morgan is proposing changes to the board’s current chair and vice chair policy. It’s an issue that came up at the start of the year, when Morgan’s fellow Democrats protested how officers were selected by the board’s four-Republican majority.
Also up for discussion are construction projects that are subject to action at the voting meeting. One of them is the closure of existing buildings and their demolition at the Cobb Horizon School near Smyrna. That campus is moving to a location at Cobb Parkway and Terrell Mill Road.
The other is related, the construction of a new school, Pearson Middle School, on the current Cobb Horizon site. That school will help alleviate overcrowding at Campbell Middle School.
Also on the board’s voting agenda is a resolution to award a contract to perform HVAC upgrades at Addison Elementary School in East Cobb.
May is also the month the school board typically adopts the next fiscal year budget, which starts on July 1. But it can’t do that until the legislature finishes its current session that was suspended in March.
The General Assembly is tentatively scheduled to resume June 11. The Cobb school district gets nearly half of its $1.1 billion budget from state funding, which has not been finalized.
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