Two members of the Cobb Board of Education on Thursday couldn’t get their colleagues to go along with a request to have a special meeting to discuss including face masks as a requirement in the Cobb County School District dress code policy.
So they’ll ask that the issue be discussed at the October school board meetings instead.
Board members Jaha Howard and Clarisse Davis (shown above in the second row, at left) were the only votes in favor of having a special called meeting before K-5 and special education students return for classroom instruction on Oct. 5.
They’re both Democrats, and were outvoted by the board’s four Republican members. Democrat David Morgan was absent from a board work session on Thursday.
Davis, who represents the Walton and Wheeler clusters, said “we have an important requirement” to carry out Superintendent Chris Ragsdale’s mask mandate for all staff and students that needs to be codified.
“We need everybody to do the right thing,” Ragsdale said during the work session in another discussion about masks. “That’s a very important part of this plan.”
Davis said she wants to stress this in the dress code policy because there are parents who don’t want their children to wear masks at school, “which doesn’t fit into what the superintendent wants to do. They’re not willing to do what they need to do.”
Howard, who represents the Campbell and Osborne clusters, said “there’s no better way to support our teachers” than to include masks in the dress code policy.
Davis had brought a motion to vote on the policy change during the work session. School board attorney Clem Doyle advised against that, saying the board typically doesn’t change policy without first notifying the public and having a discussion and vote at a voting meeting.
She withdrew her motion and seconded Howard’s motion for a special called meeting. None of the other four board members offered any comments before voting against the latter.
That sequence took place during a part of the work session at which board members bring discussion items forward. Davis and Howard asked for comments from Ragsdale about virtual learning, reopening plans and the district’s communications policy.
Ragsdale said in his own remarks that while he doesn’t like the phrase “new normal,” he admitted that when classrooms open back up, “this will not be a normal school day like it was in 2019.
“Cobb is not an online school,” he said, adding that adjusting to the reality of changes related to COVID-19 will go on for some time.
“The virus is here and it’s going to be here,” he said.
The 14-day average of COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people in Cobb is down to 182, which is still considered high community spread.
Ragsdale said that figure was “tremendous,” as he was looking at a number between 100 and 200 to reopen schools. The county average at one point in July was more than 400 cases per 100,000.
The Cobb schools mask mandate included in Ragsdale’s reopening plans also extend to sports and even outdoor events like football and softball games.
He said it was important for fall sports to be underway, even with new restrictions that include limited seating at games.
“There’s always a possibility we could go back to 100 percent online,” he said. “But I don’t think that’s around the corner.”
Ragsdale said any complete return to what school had been like before the virus isn’t going to happen anytime soon.
“I think this is going to be the environment for the rest of the school year,” he said.
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