East Cobb school walkouts

Top East Cobb stories for 2018: School walkouts lead to punitive action

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East Cobb school walkouts
Parents and family members of Walton students walking out came to lend support outside the locked school gates. (ECN)

Here’s something that took a lot of people by surprise in East Cobb in 2018: Student walkouts in favor of gun-control, a month after the high school shootings in Parkland, Fla.

Students from Walton, Pope, Lassiter and Wheeler were vocal about their plans to leave their classes at a designated time on March 14 as part of a national campaign to protest gun violence.

The Cobb County School District announced that it did not endorse the walkout, and said students who violated school disruption policies would be subject to disciplinary action.

The day after the Florida shootings, principal Chris Ragsdale announced the district would step up code-red drills to improve preparedness.

At Walton, walkout leaders said they were undeterred, claiming they had 2,300 students signed up to take part in the protest.

In an interview with East Cobb News, Walton principal Judy McNeill said she was disappointed with the students who were walking out, and that other students were organizing an alternative to honor the Florida victims before the start of the school day.

Cobb schools closed high school campuses to visitors on March 14, and even locked the gates at Walton, where parents, friends and family members brought signs to signal their support for the walkout students.

At Pope High School, police blocked the only entrance. Cobb schools claimed only 250 Walton students walked out.

As the walkout period approached, a Walton parent read the names of the 17 victims in Parkland.

The following day, some of the East Cobb walkout leaders blistered Cobb school board members during a public comment period for attempting “to silence us” about their concerns over student safety.

Most of the board members said nothing. The students who walked out generally received a day of in-school suspension.

Other top East Cobb schools stories for 2018 include the opening of new school facilities at East Cobb Middle School and Brumby Elementary School, a Dodgen math teacher being named the Cobb teacher of the year, Sprayberry High School marking its 65th anniversary and school officials conducting a school safety town hall meeting at Lassiter High School.

Principal Amanda Richie (in black dress) said the Brumby ES family will make the new campus “not just a school house but a school home.”

 

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East Cobb school safety meeting to discuss shootings and other issues

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East Cobb school safety meeting
Parents and family members supporting Walton High School students who staged a March walkout to demand gun-control measures. (East Cobb News file photo)

Thanks to East Cobb News reader and parent Rene’ Brinks Dodd for letting us know about an East Cobb school safety meeting she and other parents are putting together next week at the Whole Foods Merchants Walk location.

It’s next Tuesday, June 19, and starts at 7 p.m. in the meeting room next to the cafe in the front of the store (1289 Johnson Ferry Road) and the public is invited.

Much of this is focused around school shootings, but as you’ll see from Rene’s information below other topics will be on the agenda:

As parents, we have a say in protecting our kids, especially in school. Let’s be proactive and help make the changes the schools need so that one of our Cobb schools doesn’t end up on the news as yet another school tragedy.

I personally think our country’s culture needs to change. Other countries have guns but they don’t have a mass school shooting problem. Why does the US?

If you would like to be a part in making a change and creating a better culture for our kids to be raised in, please attend a parents local meeting next week.

Some of the topics will be recent bomb threat (Dodgen MS), sexual predators (Pope HS and recent arrest at Kell HS) and what else we need to do to make our schools safe to prevent tragedies such as mass shootings.

At Tuesday’s East Cobb meeting will be a speaker from the Sandy Hook Promise program, which trains parents and students about how to reduce and prevent gun violence.

Rene’ attended a recent meeting of the Georgia State Senate School Safety Study Committee, which was formed not long after the Parkland, Fla., school shootings that galvanized students across the country, including East Cobb high schools, to stage a March walkout (previous East Cobb News coverage here).

Members of the committee include Republican Kay Kirkpatrick of East Cobb. Additional meetings will take place through the fall, with the aim to present legislation for the 2019 session of the General Assembly.

Here’s the video of that senate committee meeting earlier this month in Roswell. It’s a little more than two hours. She says the audio quality isn’t good but there are helpful PowerPoint slides and useful information starting at the 18:12 mark.

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