ECMS got a 100 score in a measurement related to closing performance gaps.
According to the Cobb County School District, “the recognized schools also maintain the performance of their economically disadvantaged students, students with disabilities, and English learners.”
ECMS is one of 11 schools in the Cobb district to be granted Reward School status and the only one in the East Cobb area. The others are in the South Cobb area.
The CCRPI results were issued last October, and East Cobb schools are listed here.
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!
Black History Month in February brought some star quality to East Cobb in the presence of actor Louis Gossett Jr.
His visit to East Cobb Middle School near the end of the month included some inspiring words for students, as he told them that “every month is American History Month.”
Gossett is the first African-American to win an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the 1982 movie “An Officer and A Gentleman,” and his message to sixth grade students was to embrace their role in shaping the future.
“If we are going to be together for the rest of our lives, we need to hold hands and show the rest of the world, by example, how this togetherness works,” Gossett told them, asking them to rise and join hands.
Here’s more about his visit from CCSD, which also submitted the photo:
“I know it is Black History Month, but every month is American History Month, and it is important you know how much you need one another and what you represent,” Gossett told the students.
He advised the students to learn about their neighbors because everyone comes together to make America. He also pointed to the students’ grandparents as a source of valuable information about past generations. Explaining the importance of reaching across generations, Gossett revealed that he had a photo with his great grandmother, who had been a slave. She was 115 years old in the photo.
“Take the time to listen to your teachers. Take the time to listen to your parents,” he continued.
“Now is the time for you to start thinking about what you are going to be. This is when you go from childhood to grown up.”
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!
East Cobb Middle School students and staff join Superintendent Chris Ragsdale (third from right) and Principal Leetonia Young (second from right) to cut the ribbon Tuesday morning. (East Cobb News photo by Wendy Parker)
The doors opened to new campuses for Brumby Elementary and East Cobb Middle School Tuesday morning, as two overcrowded school grounds more than 50 years old gave way to twin facilities on Terrell Mill Road.
The day before a new school year began, staff and teachers at the East Cobb’s oldest schools rejoiced in a day they have been hoping would come about for many years.
Back-to-back ribbon-cutting festivities, followed by open house tours, doubled the excitement for both school communities.
“This community deserves this,” East Cobb MS principal Dr. Leetonia Young said to rousing cheers, referring to the two-story building as a “resort.”
Instead of five aging buildings bunched in on Holt Road, its home since it opened in 1963, East Cobb MS is just one building, and can handle an enrollment of 1,300 students.
“Compared to where you came from, this is a resort,” echoed Cobb schools Superintendent. Like young and other dignitaries who spoke at the festivities, he thanked Cobb voters for approving the Cobb Ed-SPLOST sales tax that financed construction of both new schools to a combined tune of more than $53 million.
An East Cobb Middle School student looks at class lists posted on the wall. (CCSD photo)
Brumby Elementary, which opened in a single round building on Powers Ferry Road in 1966, was massively overcrowded even with additional buildings and 17 portable classrooms.
Not only was that unsafe for students and teachers, but it also posed traffic dangers for carpooling parents and bus queues that lined up on busy Powers Ferry Road.
A Brumby student who can attest to those conditions is rising fifth-grader Vincent Carter, a member of the school’s Boy Scout color guard.
He said it was “a really looooong walk” to leave class and go to the bathroom at the old school, and not fun at all in the rain.
He’ll get to enjoy his new school for only a year, but a year from now will start sixth grade next door at the new East Cobb Middle School.
Dr. Amanda Richie, the Brumby principal, got emotional discussing the evolution of the new school, which was about five years in the making. She also credited her faculty and staff that she said stuck together during some adverse times, trying to make do with an outdated campus.
“We’re a family, we’re the Brumby family,” she said. Because it’s a special group, she added, the new building will be “not just a school house, but a school home.
“I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”
Principal Amanda Richie (in black dress) said the Brumby ES family will help make the new campus “not just a school house but a school home.” (East Cobb News photo by Wendy Parker)
Members of the family whose land made the new schools possible also were in attendance. Six generations of the Hill family lived and farmed on 40 acres on Terrell Mill Road, even after it was subdivided to descendants.
The land was sold to the Cobb County School District for just under $10 million in 2014, and construction got underway in the fall of 2016.
Ed Graham, the grandson of Dorsey and Sarah Hill, attended Brumby its first two years, and brought along the jersey he wore as a member of the first Brumby Bobcats football team.
While the land featured cows, pigs, some chickens and vegetables, to him and his siblings and his cousins, “it was a 40-acre playground.”
His cousin, Tracy Luttrell Bennett, recalled childhood memories that included pea-shelling, corn-shucking, selling vegetables to passers-by, homemade ice cream every Father’s Day, Easter egg hunts and sales of pumpkins and Christmas trees during the holidays.
Ed Graham, who grew up on farmland that is now the schools’ sites, holds up the jersey he wore as member of the Brumby Bobcats. (CCSD photo)
“It’s a great honor to see these schools here today,” she said, encouraging the students to “work together, work hard, stay strong in the good times and the tough times, value your community and value your education.”
Cobb Board of Education member Scott Sweeney, who represents the Brumby and ECMS attendance zones, said that with their expanded capacity, the schools will be better able to serve as community centers.
While both schools have educational challenges—students come from cultural backgrounds that include a total of 40 languages and their enrollments have many transitory families—the extra elbow room can start to help make a difference.
Charlene Brisco, who is starting her sixth year as Brumby’s social worker, said she and her counselors have classroom space at the new school they didn’t have before, and that will enable them to conduct small-group meetings with students who need their help.
There’s also a food pantry to help out families in need, with room for a refrigerator that wasn’t available at the old school.
“Now we can expand what we’re doing,” she said.
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!
In less than a month the rebuilt campuses of Brumby Elementary School and East Cobb Middle School will be open for classes at their new adjacent locations on Terrell Mill Road.
We swung by there over the weekend and saw that the parking lot at East Cobb Middle is just about complete, and that some work remains to finish the Brumby lot.
Ground was broken nearly two years ago, in September 2016, for the twin campuses, which cost a total of $51 million (Brumby $22.7 million, ECMS $28.6 million).
They replace two of the older school buildings in East Cobb, and the Cobb County School District. Brumby opened in a round building on Powers Ferry Road in 1966, and has added a two-story classroom building and trailers to accommodate a student enrollment that has exceeded 1,000.
East Cobb Middle School opened on Holt Road in 1963 (followed by Wheeler High School across the street in 1965) and also has outgrown its campus.
The schools will also share a singular entrance, at Greenwood Trail, and a new traffic signal recently became operational.
Carpool and bus queues will be fully contained on the school property, which was a particular problem for Brumby, as parents lined up for drop off and pick up on busy Powers Ferry Road.
The former ECMS site will be the new home for Eastvalley Elementary School, which will be relocating from its longtime campus on Lower Roswell Road at Holt Road.
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!
Several Terrell Mill Road traffic improvements to accommodate the relocations of Brumby Elementary School and East Cobb Middle School were approved Tuesday by the Cobb Board of Commissioners.
The commissioners approved a measure to spend $427,656 for a new traffic signal, a sidewalk and flashing beacons around the new school sites, which are under construction adjacent to one another and are set to open for the 2018-19 school year.
The low bid was from Glosson Enterprises, Inc., and the work is expected to be done by July 22, 2018—a little more than a week before the start of school.
The money is earmarked from the 2016 Cobb government SPLOST (Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax).
The signal will be installed at Terrell Mill Road and Greenwood Trail, at the joint entrances to the schools. The sidewalk will be constructed on the north side of Greenwood Trail, from Terrell Mill Road to Foxcroft Circle. Here’s more from Cobb DOT:
“To mitigate impacts of the new signal at Terrell Mill Road and Greenwood Trail and along the Terrell Mill Road Corridor, the adaptive signal timing area will be expanded to include the new signal and four other existing area traffic signals.”
The commissioners also approved a measure that would allow Cobb DOT to begin condemnation proceedings against two property owners in the area should right-of-way negotiations with them fall through.
Cobb DOT said discussions are continuing with Victoria Kelly and Erin Bell, property owners at 3141 and 3142 Greenwood Trail, respectively, both located at the intersection of Terrell Mill Road.
The county needs 253 square feet and 430 square feet, respectively, from the property owners for right-of-way and construction easements to complete the traffic improvements. Condemnation would be employed only to meet project deadlines.
Surveillance photos provided by Cobb Police Department.
An East Cobb bank robbery Thursday morning resulted in the short lockdown of two nearby schools as police pursued a suspect.
According to the Cobb County School District, the exterior doors to Wheeler High School and East Cobb Middle School were locked for about 15 minutes after Cobb Police began investigating the robbery at the Fifth Third Bank location inside a Kroger supermarket at 2100 Roswell Road.
The schools are located across the street from one another on Holt Road and 1.3 miles from the Kroger at the Pavilions at East Lake Shopping Center at Roswell and Robinson roads.
Police said the robbery took place shortly after 10 a.m., when a man walked into the bank and demanded money from a teller.
According to police, the suspect never showed a weapon and left the bank with cash on foot, through the shopping center parking lot, and possibly in the direction of Wheeler.
The suspect remained at large late Thursday afternoon. According to a CCSD statement, the lockdown was “done out of an abundance of caution” at the request of Cobb Police.
“There was never any threat at either school and both schools continued with instruction as normal,” the CCSD statement continued. “Student and staff movement within the building was never restricted.”
Cobb Police described the suspect as an Asian male, around six feet tall, with a husky build. He’s believed to be between 30-40 years old, and was last seen wearing a black hoodie, a black Washington Nationals baseball cap and jeans.
Anyone with information about the robbery is asked to call Cobb Police at 770-499-3945.
