Cobb schools teacher deaths Archives

Cobb schools teacher deaths

After two of their colleagues died Thursday from COVID-19, educators in the Cobb County School District pleaded to keep classes remote.

At a Cobb Board of Education meeting Thursday night, a coordinated effort by several teachers and other district staff calling themselves members of “one team” seeking “team trust and accountability” demanded answers about the district’s response to the ongoing pandemic.

They didn’t get any.

Cynthia Lindsey, a paraprofessional at Sedalia Park Elementary School in East Cobb, and Dana Johnson, a teacher at Kemp Elementary School, died Thursday after being hospitalized with COVID-19 and pneumonia.

Cobb schools this week have reverted to remote learning, but those students who chose face-to-face learning for the spring semester are scheduled to return to their schools on Monday.

“There are a lot of people out there,” said Cobb County Association of Educators president Connie Jackson, referencing to the parking lot outside. Only one speaker at a time is allowed inside the board’s meeting room at the district office in Marietta due to COVID-19 restrictions.

“They’re mad, and they’re scared, and they’re angry, because they don’t think anybody cares,” she said.

Jackson said after the two deaths on Thursday, “this needs to be a topic for the school board. This needs to be publicly talked about . . . We need you to hear you discuss it and make us feel like it matters to you.”

But other than Superintendent Chris Ragsdale offering condolences to Lindsey, there was no discussion. Speakers at the board’s Thursday afternoon work session also asked that classes stay remote, but an attempt by board member Jaha Howard to raise the topic, and to discuss the district’s pandemic response, was cut off.

Board members are prohibited from making comments at their meetings after a 2019 policy change that Howard and member Charisse Davis said was aimed at silencing them.

The decision by Ragsdale to go remote was based, he said, on growing cases (nearly 500 across the district last week alone) and high numbers of teachers and staff in quarantine.

He didn’t say anything on Thursday about the return to face-to-face learning next week.

(You can watch replays of both of Thursday’s meetings by clicking here.)

Jennifer Susko, a counselor at Mableton Elementary School, told board members Thursday night she was offended by Ragsdale’s letter that went out to district staff on Christmas Day, when Hendricks Elementary School teacher Patrick Key became the first district in the teacher to die of COVID.

She said Ragsdale’s brief mention of Key in that message was “dismissive” and she admonished him and two board members who weren’t wearing masks. In his obituary, she said, Key had asked the public to wear masks.

“We see where your priorities are,” said Susko, who was critical of what she said was “false gratitude” for district staff.

Teacher Trish McNally asked the board to consider hiring more counselors and support staff to address social and emotional learning needs that she said should be a top priority.

As for teachers, she said, “we are burning out.”

Another educator, Justin Julian, said that teachers should have the same choices as parents and be able to teach from home.

Teachers have been required to teach at their schools, although they’ve been doing that remotely this week.

“Be the leaders who unite rather than inflame,” Julian said.

Anna Clay said that in Cobb County, “we are in a worse COVID situation than we were last week” and she doesn’t feel safe returning to school on Monday.

According to the Georgia Department of Public Health, there were 383 new confirmed COVID-19 cases in Cobb County. The 14-day average of cases per 100,000 is 867, well above the “high community spread” threshold of 100 per 100,000.

Only one speaker, Kelly Crutchfield, was in favor of keeping the face-to-face choice available.

She said that “when we suffer heartbreak, it is easy to let emotions cloud our judgments.”

She said that “schools are essential” and they “are not super spreaders” of COVID and that children are not transmitting the virus.

Forcing the entire district into all-remote learning, Crutchfield said, “is unscientific and dangerous.”

Roughly 66 percent of all Cobb students are in face-to-face learning for the spring semester that began Jan. 6.